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Jack Turner

Weekly update: party congress to determine Merkel successor begins

Updated: Feb 2, 2021

By Jack Turner


The party congress meeting to determine Merkel’s successor to the CDU chairmanship is now just a week away. The three candidates are all vying for the position, but after Friday's final conference in Berlin, they will now simply have to wait and see.


According to a recent poll, it seems Friedrich Merz is the favourite to succeed her, with most political commentators  writing off Jens Spahn’s chances.


On a somewhat controversial note, some have drawn attention to Merz’s chairmanship of the Supervisory Board of ‘Blackrock’, the world’s largest asset management corporation. By proposing the idea of pensions being secured through the stocks, he has been accused of having a vested interest.


Despite her late arrival, Angela Merkel used her visit to the G20 summit to discuss the Ukraine conflict with Putin this morning, and the Interior Ministers extended the deportation ban to Syria.


Elsewhere, environmentalist continue to call for an end to coal use, as tens of thousands came out in force to protest in Berlin and Cologne. After the controversy over the Hambach Forest, the issue of coal and climate change simply will not go away.

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