Dennis Radtke, chairman of the CDU’s employees wing, has called on party leader and newly re‑elected federal chancellor Friedrich Merz to steer the party’s internal social debate onto a more coherent course. Speaking to the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland” (Friday editions) before the CDU party congress in Stuttgart, Radtke described the past weeks and months as “full of piecemeal arguments and wild individual proposals”. He warned that this “is one of the biggest challenges for the chancellor and party chair: he must bring order to the debate” and added that there is still “a lot of room for improvement in coordination”.
While Merz faces many other tasks, especially in foreign policy, Radtke urged him to delegate more domestic issues. “Politics is teamwork, after all” he said. Radtke critiqued the CDU’s tendency to launch debates with isolated social claims-such as extending working hours or cutting specific benefits-rather than articulating a comprehensive social agenda. According to him, this approach frightens people and alienates large segments of the electorate.
He argued that in social reform discussions, communication is nearly as crucial as the reforms themselves. “Everything feels too sharp, too alarmist. We lack a positive future narrative” Radtke said, noting that this deficit is also evident in Merz’s own rhetoric. Over the years, Radtke has been dissatisfied with how the CDU has conducted its social debate. He believes the public now sees the SPD as the party for workers and social policy, while the CDU is viewed as responsible for everything else. This perception, Radtke said, has weakened the party’s social profile and hurt its standing in the polls.
