By
our dpa-correspondent and Europe Online
Berlin (dpa) – A key ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel announced
Wednesday he was stepping down as premier of Germany‘s largest state
Bavaria at the next election.
“I will not be standing in the next state elections,” Horst Seehofer,
66, of the Christian Social Union (CSU) told Die Welt newspaper,
ending months of speculation and triggering a power struggle within
the party.
A former minister in two federal governments, Seehofer has since 2008
held the positions of party leader and premier of Bavaria, Germany‘s
most prosperous state and home to leading industrial names, like BMW
and Europe‘s largest insurer Allianz.
Traditional parties such as the CSU and its sister party, the
Christian Democrats (CDU), which is headed by Merkel, are struggling
to respond to new political forces, such as the right-wing populist
Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the anti-Islam Pegida movement.
For example, at the last CSU party conference, there was a proposal
to force immigrants to speak German at home, which Merkel was forced
to publicly distance herself from, saying it was “not a mistake when
children grow up with two languages.”
Seehofer said in the Welt article that Merkel was a “first-class”
leader and that he hoped she would remain as chancellor after the
next election in 2017.
He also dismissed AfD and Pegida as protest movements, saying too
much was said about them. “These phenomena are not so important,” he
said.
Seehofer‘s most likely replacements are Bavarian Economy Minister
Ilse Aigner or Finance Minister Markus Soeder.
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