CDU faces mounting pressure to rethink Left Party cooperation ban
Berlin—Just days before the CDU's federal party conference in Stuttgart at the end of this week, Social Democratic politicians are urging their coalition partner to abandon its rigid stance of exclusion toward the Left Party.
"The CDU would do well to reassess its relationship with the Left," Jochen Ott, the designated top candidate for North Rhine-Westphalia's SPD, told Der Spiegel. "Equating the Left Party with the far-right AfD in the incompatibility resolution is no longer appropriate given the AfD's growing radicalization—and it downplays a party that the domestic intelligence agency classifies as a suspected far-right extremist case," Ott criticized.
Sebastian Roloff, co-chair of the Bavarian SPD, demanded: "The CDU must engage in an honest debate about the functionality of our democracy." Without the Left Party, he noted, the Bundestag lacks the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments or the election of constitutional judges. "These are not mere opposition issues—they concern the very foundations of our democratic order," said Roloff, who also serves as the SPD parliamentary group's economic policy spokesman, in his interview with Der Spiegel. "From a political standpoint, it would be wise to finally treat the incompatibility resolution for what it is: a relic of partisan politics that obstructs democratic practice."
Philipp Türmer, leader of the SPD's youth wing, the Jusos, told Der Spiegel: "The blanket rejection of any cooperation with the Left Party is a mistake." He warned that this stance risks paralyzing the CDU and, in the long run, endangering democracy itself. "It's time for the CDU to face reality and abandon this ideological dead end," Türmer said.
The CDU has thus far categorically ruled out "coalitions or similar forms of cooperation" with both the Left Party and the AfD. The relevant incompatibility resolution was adopted at the party's Hamburg conference in December 2018 and has remained unchanged ever since.
"By systematically excluding cooperation with the Left Party, the CDU undermines parliamentary effectiveness—blocking essential two-thirds majorities—while simultaneously relying on the Left's support in Thuringia to sustain its minority government," Ott, the NRW SPD parliamentary group leader, pointed out. "The CDU needs to resolve this glaring contradiction."
Türmer emphasized that, unlike the AfD, the Left Party is a democratic force. "Anyone who dismisses democratic parties while far-right extremists gain strength has failed to grasp the real problem." He argued that all democratic forces are needed in state parliaments and the Bundestag. "Clinging to outdated resolutions simply to avoid stating the obvious only weakens the country in the end."
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