CDU/CSU
- Represented as an opposition party in the state parliament
- Involved as a small coalition partner in the state government
- Involved as a major coalition partner in the state government and represents the head of government
- (As of 2013)
As a Union or Union parties, the two sister parties CDU and CSU are called in Germany. In the German Bundestag to form a common fraction, the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. Members of both parties are also referred to as Union Christian.
The two parties are legally separated in financial, organizational and programmatic framework. Nevertheless, they have a common youth organization Junge Union. Programmatic differences between the CDU and CSU are mainly that the CSU in the city, law and social policy is more conservative and social in economic and social policy.
The Union and Franz Josef Strauss
The bond between the CDU and the CSU was not always that: At the time of the CSU party chairman Franz Josef Strauss came in 1976 Kreuther separation resolution of the CSU, which dissolve since 1949 existing joint parliamentary group in the Bundestag 8. The aim of the CSU was to get more speaking time in Parliament.
Already in the years before had been formed in the German countries outside Bavaria " circles of friends of the CSU ," referring inter alia to the Fourth Community Action Party ( AVP) developed. The support for the AVP was abandoned by the CSU at the insistence of the CDU again. The AVP took three weeks before the general election in 1976 her candidacy back. After the election threatened Strauss, motivated by a poor performance of the CDU and a score of 60% for the CSU in Bavaria, again with the establishment of a " Fourth Party ". But this idea he dropped after the CDU threatened with their shows, in Bavaria.
Mid-1979 was the election of a chancellor candidate for the federal election in 1980 to the next ordeal for the Union. Strauss appointed in May to the candidates, while the CDU later Ernst Albrecht little to chose candidates. A vote on July 2, 1979 gave Strauss a slim majority, he had once again threatened with the " Fourth Party ".
Strauss warned in his " inflammatory speech of Sonthofen " the Federal Republic of facing a major crisis. He criticized the social-liberal coalition and especially the FDP. Against the background of the German Autumn, he also spoke on the issue of terrorism warning. The counter-action of the "left " was Stops Strauss and was then, also in Bavaria, a popular motif for buttons.
The Union after 1980
The 1980 election was lost for the Union parties; many voters had switched to the FDP. For Strauss, this meant the end of his federal political ambitions. For the opposition leader of the CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl, however, this was the chance to own nationwide political establishment. He went to the Union of the FDP and finally came in 1982, after the FDP exit from the coalition with the SPD, by a vote of no confidence in the Office of the Chancellor.
The Union parties won the following four general elections, 1983, 1987, 1990 and 1994.
In 1998, after sixteen years in power, a new coalition of the opposition parties and the FDP did not come off because of the majority in the newly elected German parliament and formed up to the 2005 federal election the opposition in the Bundestag. 2005-2009 formed the Union parties with a grand coalition of the SPD, while they received back in the 17th Bundestag with the FDP coalition.
After the parliamentary election in 2013, which led to a departure of the former coalition partner FDP from the German Bundestag and the Union parties only barely missed the absolute majority, they have now in addition to a new edition of the Grand Coalition with the black -green coalition yet another option, to govern.