After three years in the wilderness, Maassen has secured a Bundestag nomination for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the eastern state of Thuringia. Though election day is more than four months away, political Berlin is abuzz with speculation over what Maassen’s parliamentary ambitions mean for the ailing centre-right CDU. Its chairman Armin Laschet is largely powerless to intervene in local CDU Thuringia business. A year ago CDU members of Thuringia’s state parliament joined forces with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FPD) to elect the latter party’s leader as state premier. As they sat together on a talk show, Neubauer accused CDU leader Laschet of tolerating the former spy chief’s nomination and thereby “legitimising racist, anti-Semitic, identitarian as well as science-denial content”.

Source: The Irish Times May 21, 2021 19:03 UTC