The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz sees no more room in his party for the new chairman of the Value Union, Hans-Georg Maassen. "The measure is full. We have asked Mr. Maassen to leave the party. It is not easy to be excluded from the party, but we are currently carefully examining what options we have," Merz told the "Bild am Sonntag". Maassen's language and ideas no longer have a place in the CDU.

The former president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Maassen, was elected chairman of the arch-conservative Union of Values ​​on Saturday. The grouping is not an official union association. It claims to have around 4,000 members. For years, Maaßen - a member of the Thuringian CDU - has repeatedly caused controversy with controversial statements.

Call for expulsion from the party

In the past few days he had again come under heavy criticism. In a tweet he claimed that the thrust of the "driving forces in the political and media space" was "eliminatory racism against whites". In an interview he spoke of a "red-green racial theory". As a result, several CDU politicians called on him to leave the party or threatened to apply to be expelled from the party.

In the "Bild am Sonntag" Merz also moved away from his previous resolution of wanting to halve the AfD. "I haven't repeated this statement since 2018," said the CDU leader. "The extremist structures and the far-right rhetoric in the AfD are solidifying. The AfD is firmly on the side of Russia and is mobilizing especially in East Germany," said Merz.

He has by no means given up his claim to win back voters from the AfD. "But we will steadfastly stick to the Union's course of clearly demarcating ourselves to the far right," emphasized Merz. "We can only reach AfD voters to a very limited extent at the moment," he added.