(Bloomberg) -- Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is fighting to preserve her position as Angela Merkel’s heir apparent after her attempts to accelerate the transfer of power backfired.
Kramp-Karrenbauer, who replaced Merkel as head of the Christian Democratic Union in December, embarked on a charm offensive over the weekend to demonstrate her loyalty to the German chancellor after failing to win support for an effort to persuade Merkel to step aside early.
AKK, as Kramp-Karrenbauer is known, has been lobbying Merkel to hand over the reins after European elections this month, arguing that splitting the party leadership from the chancellorship is damaging the party. She is said to have sent a message to Merkel urging her to resign and called a party conference for June 2 to try to force her hand.
Those efforts appeared headed for frustration on Saturday when Wolfgang Schaeuble, the president of Germany’s parliament and a CDU grandee, insisted Merkel should be in office until her term ends in 2021.
Schaeuble has previously been a key figure in efforts by Merkel’s conservative opponents within the CDU to oust the chancellor. While AKK has been reaching out to that faction since she won the party leadership with Merkel’s backing, she backed off in an interview published Sunday.
“Angela Merkel is the chancellor until 2021,” Funke Media Group quoted Kramp-Karrenbauer as saying. “I have to do my work as party leader and that’s what I’m concentrating on.”
The public damage limitation exercise shows how Merkel’s plans to hand over the leadership of Germany to someone who would preserve her legacy are now in danger.
Merkel is determined to serve out her fourth term until September 2021, two people with knowledge of the situation said last week. And there are increasing doubts within the party that Kramp-Karrenbauer would still hold enough sway to run for Germany’s top political job two years from now, one of the people said.
Sacrifice Play?
Kramp-Karrenbauer’s rationale for the power grab was the prospect of losses for the CDU in European Parliament elections on May 26, one of the people said.
Merkel may attempt to pacify her critics with a cabinet shuffle if the CDU does badly, Bild am Sonntag reported. It would involve replacing her ally Peter Altmaier as economy minister with Jens Spahn, a critic of Merkel’s refugee policy who was one of AKK’s opponents for the CDU chairmanship in December.
Altmaier is considered vulnerable after presenting an industrial-policy blueprint that German business leaders criticized as focusing too much on promoting large national champions over small and midsize companies.
A government spokeswoman declined to comment.
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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