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CDU wants to be younger, more diverse

August 18, 2015

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats are the strongest political party in Germany, but they're not about to rest on their laurels. The party has unveiled reforms meant to make it younger and more diverse.

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Merkel CDU Parteitag 08.12.2014 Köln
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Vennenbernd

Speaking to reporters in Berlin on Monday, the Christian Democratic Union's general secretary Peter Tauber (pictured above, with Merkel) said the CDU's executive had approved the proposed reforms billed as "My CDU 2017" and that they were to be put to a vote at a party convention in December.

"My CDU 2017" is aimed at ensuring that the CDU remains a large, broad-based party in the long term by attracting more young and female members, as well as more people from migrant backgrounds.

Current CDU members are 59 years old, on average, and only one in four is female, according to the dpa news agency.

Tauber said one of the goals outlined in the paper released on Monday is to bring female membership in the party to 30 percent within the next five years. He cautioned, however, that this was "just an interim goal."

In an effort to attract more supporters from migrant backgrounds, one of the planned measures is to publish information about the party in several languages other than German.

"We are aiming for a membership structure that reflects the diversity of our society," Tauber said.

The reform proposals come at a time when the CDU and all of Germany's other mainstream parties have seen declining memberships, a trend that has persisted for several years.

According to the paper, around 14,000 people join the CDU for the first time each year. But it also conceded that it needs to attract many more new members to counter the demographic trend of overall declining membership.

Top of the polls

The proposals also come at a time when the Christian Democrats and their leader, Angela Merkel, are flying so high in the polls that one prominent member of the Social Democrats (SPD) recently publicly questioned whether the SPD should even bother running a candidate for chancellor in the next general election.

Schleswig-Holstein State Premier Torsten Albig told public broadcaster NDR last month that there was no real point in the SPD putting up a candidate to challenge Merkel, because it would be "stupid to think that we could win."

SPD Chairman Sigmar Gabriel and other leading members of the Social Democrats have rejected Albig's skepticism, insisting the SPD would nominate a chancellor candidate in 2017.

pfd/cmk (AFP, dpa)