The overview in brief reports on developments, results and assessments relating to German politics:
Merz separates from management team boss Verpoorten
After only nine weeks, the CDU federal chairman Friedrich Merz is separating from the head of his office and head of management at the CDU headquarters, Andrea Verpoorten. According to the Bild newspaper (Friday edition), a spokesman for the party confirmed the separation by “mutual agreement”. The Cologne CDU politician told the newspaper: “The expectations did not fit.” Verpoorten had said about Merz when she started her job: “He is a political role model and we also know each other very well privately. We want to advance the CDU together.” Merz himself once again complained about the lack of women in his party at the Junge Union festival this week.
NRW Environment Minister resigns in Mallorca affair
After severe criticism in connection with her controversial trip to Mallorca after the flood disaster, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Environment Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser (CDU) has announced her resignation. “The necessary trust in me as a minister has been permanently called into question,” said Heinen-Esser on Thursday in Dsseldorf. The minister had been criticized for weeks because she returned to her vacation in Mallorca after the flood of the century and apparently stayed longer on the holiday island than she later stated in the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the disaster.
SMEs see the right signals in the Easter package
According to the assessment of the German Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, the government’s package of immediate energy measures is “clearly going in the right direction”. The federal government should now consistently pursue this path and remove further implementation brakes of the past. “From our point of view, Robert Habeck has succeeded with his Easter package in promoting important measures towards independence from the energy supply,” said Managing Director Marc Tenbieg. However, the path that has now been taken must be pursued consistently and significantly faster in order to be able to achieve the ambitious government goals. “Further measures must now follow quickly,” Tenbieg demanded. “For example, the infrastructure development for green hydrogen and in particular the so-called super write-offs for investments in climate protection and digitization.”
Wst demands commitments from the federal government for refugee costs
The Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia and Chairman of the Conference of Prime Ministers, Hendrik Wst (CDU), called for a reliable financial contribution from the federal government to the costs for the refugees from Ukraine before the meeting of the federal and state governments planned for the afternoon. “Today there must be a result,” said Wst in the ZDF morning magazine. “Today’s agreement is the prerequisite for us to create clarity for the municipalities,” he emphasized. With regard to the dimension of the refugee movement, it is clear that the federal, state and local governments are a “community of responsibility”. The federal government has already promised a financial contribution, but now it is a question of “the amount and reliability that will now be possible”.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 07, 2022 18:00 ET (22:00 GMT)