Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (the CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the CSU, want to nominate a joint candidate to be the next president of Germany when the special “Bundesversammlung” committee that elects one votes at the end of January.
It’s long been clear that the CSU favor the current speaker of Bavaria‘s parliament, Ilse Aigner, for the role.
But on Friday, multiple German news outlets like Spiegel, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the DPA news agency cited sources in the CDU as saying that party’s leadership had also decided on putting Aigner forward.
DPA reported that Merz would officially recommend Aigner as a candidate at a meeting of the CDU’s leadership that will convene in Berlin on Sunday and Monday.
On the record, however, party officials would neither confirm nor deny the reports, pointing only to the upcoming meetings on Monday.
Aigner appears to have the backing of both Bavaria’s Markus Söder and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, visible in the background on the main stage at the CSU party conference in this photoImage: Peter Kneffel/dpa/picture alliance
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If chosen, Aigner would be the 13th person and the first woman to take up the role as post-war Germany’s head of state, which is a more ceremonial one with primarily symbolic power, while the bulk of the political and legislative power resides with the chancellor.
She would also be the first CSU politician to hold the office.
Aigner, 61, is currently the speaker of the state parliament in Bavaria.
The youngest of four sisters and the daughter of an electrician, she worked in the family business in her early adult life before going into politics. She’s a Roman Catholic, single and has no children.
Aigner began her parliamentary career in the Bavarian legislature in 1994, then moved to the Bundestag federal parliament in 1998, before returning to the Bavarian chamber in 2013.
She spent five years as federal agriculture minister under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel.
She would also be the first CSU politician to hold the office.
Current President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a heavy hitter for years for the Social Democrats before becoming head of state, is nearing the end of his second five-year term in the role, having assumed the office in March 2017.
Aigner is the speaker or president of Bavaria’s state parliament at present, she’s also a former federal agriculture minister Image: Rolf Poss/IMAGO
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The CDU/CSU’s junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), have also made it clear they would back a presidential bid from Aigner.
“If the CDU steering committee does indeed officially assert itself on Monday and put forward Ilse Aigner, then on behalf of the SPD I can only say that we would welcome this and support it,” SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil said at an event in Berlin.
A large committee known as the Bundesversammlung chooses the German president. It will vote on January 30, 2027.
It’s made up of all 630 Bundestag parliament members, and another 630 people assigned to represent the various German states — weighted according to each state’s share of the national population.
Most of these are regional lawmakers, but municipal politicians and people from other walks of public life are also sometimes given a vote.
The CDU/CSU and SPD combined have a majority of roughly 50 seats in the special committee.
Beyond this, Merz is expected to try to rope in support for Aigner from the Greens, a party that has long championed more female representation at the top of politics and that would not seem to have a realistic chance of propelling a candidate of its own into the role.
This suggests that if Aigner’s nomination were to materialize and solidify, she should have fairly good chances of succeeding Steinmeier.