German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced earlier this week that she is stepping down as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, or CDU. She also will not seek re-election as chancellor in 2021. Merkel has been Germany’s chancellor for 13 years and her center-right CDU party has been part of the country’s majority ruling coalitions for most of the post-war decades.
Recent CDU losses in state elections in Bavaria and Hesse to both the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, and the liberal-left Green Party, clearly show the weakening political center in Germany that the CDU and its center-left counterpart, the SPD, occupy. And it was those losses as well as some internal CDU infighting that prompted Merkel to announce her departure.
We reached out to the New York Times’ Berlin correspondent Melissa Eddy on Monday to learn more. Eddy told us that people have known for a while that Merkel was winding down her political career. But her announcement came far earlier than anyone expected:
