New German CDU Leader Intends to Overhaul State's Migration Policy

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said on Sunday that she intended to review the country's migration policies, adding that the party’s campaign during the 2019 European Parliament elections would be based on these potential changes.

"In January, I intend to hold talks on migration and security with experts and critics of the migration and asylum policies in order to develop concrete improvements [to this policy]. Our campaign in the European Parliament elections will be based, among other things, on the results [of these negotiations]," Kramp-Karrenbauer said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

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Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was elected to succeed Angela Merkel as the party leader on Friday, after the latter said in November that she would neither run for CDU party leadership again nor seek the fifth term as chancellor in 2021, setting a deadline for her exit from German politics.

Following the new leader's election, CDU has also chosen its new secretary general at the party congress in Hamburg who would replace Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer on her previous role; the position will be taken over by Paul Ziemiak, the head of the party's youth organization Junge Union. 

Kramp-Karrenbauer's statement comes amid repeated criticism aimed at the former leader of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, Angela Merkel, for her open-door migration policy, which resulted in a million of mostly North African migrants pouring into Germany in 2015. Her party's popularity slumped in the following years, causing it to lose seats in the federal parliament in 2017.