Merz heads to Junge Union congress in Bonn as youth frustration lingers
Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany's CDU, travels tomorrow to the congress of the party's youth wing, the Junge Union, in Bonn. Its members remain frustrated after last year's pension dispute and are demanding reforms.
Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany's conservative CDU/CSU alliance, travels to Bonn tomorrow for the Deutschlandtag, the congress of the Junge Union, the alliance's youth organisation. He will meet a party youth that is still frustrated after last year's dispute over pensions. The younger members, gathered around Johannes Winkel, want reforms at last. Whether Merz can pacify the party base is assessed by Rasmus Buchsteiner, reporting from Bonn.
Demand for a future-proof package
Politico also features an interview with Catarina dos Santos-Wintz, parliamentary managing director of the Union's group in the Bundestag. She outlines what she believes a comprehensive, future-proof package should look like. She also says that the Junge Union and the parliamentary group's Junge Gruppe (Young Group) will no longer accept weak compromises on intergenerational fairness.
EU summit and Ukraine support
Meanwhile, at the European Union summit in Brussels, heads of state and government are wrestling over Europe's economic future. Hans von der Burchard analyses the meeting as well as the new trade-policy stress test with China. The programme also examines how serious the funding gap for aid to Ukraine really is, given waning US support.
These are the topics of the Berlin Playbook, a Politico Deutschland podcast released every morning from 5 a.m. It is produced by Rixa Fürsen, Maximilian Stascheit and the POLITICO team.
