The party leadership believes that the ideas of the former president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the entire union of values ??have no place in the CDU. The presidency is unanimously urging Hans-Georg Maassen to leave. Otherwise it wants to take action itself.
The CDU Presidium has given the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, a deadline for leaving the party. In a unanimously passed decision, Maassen is asked to leave the CDU by 12 noon next Sunday, as the party announced. If he does not comply with this request, the presidency of the CDU federal executive asked “to initiate a party exclusion procedure and to withdraw his membership rights with immediate effect”.
According to the information, the Presidium distanced itself “emphatically from Maassen’s statements”. “Again and again he uses the language from the milieu of anti-Semites and conspiracy ideologues to ethnic expressions,” says the decision. Maassen was “obviously not interested in the well-being of the CDU”. He is constantly violating the principles and order of the party. “There is no place in our party for his statements and the ideas they express,” emphasized the CDU presidium. The panel was unanimously of the opinion that Maassen “has to leave the party”.
According to the information, the CDU Presidium also dealt with the Union of Values ????association, for which Maassen was elected new chairman. CDU members who are also members there are asked in the presidium decision to leave the union of values: “In our understanding, anyone who is a member of the CDU cannot also be a member of the so-called ‘Union of Values’.” At the latest since Maassen was elected, each of their members has had to ask themselves where their political home is.
Maassen was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 2012 to 2018. He had to vacate the post after questioning right-wing extremist riots in Chemnitz. In 2021 he failed in the federal elections as a direct candidate for the CDU in Thuringia.
The Union of Values, founded in 2017, sees itself as a group of conservative Christian Democrats. She argues that the CDU, under the then party leader Angela Merkel, had shifted too far to the left and had to take more conservative positions again. It operates as a registered association and is not one of the official party organizations. According to the group, it has around 4,000 members.
