Merkel's successor: I'll make sure our Chancellor doesn't fall this mandate

The new CDU chairman, Annegret Kramp-Carrenbauer, said during the party congress in Hamburg about future CDU strategies and Russia's treatment in the face of the Crime crisis.

DA: Mrs. Kramp-Carrenbauer, you won a victory by very little margin of votes. There are many people in the party who would like the party to take a more conservative position. How do you please these disappointed ones, and what do you offer them?

AKK: We experienced a party convention, which was really polarised in debate, just in the alternative. But we also found that content is not discernible among candidates. So just like Friedrich Merzi and Jens Spahn I represent a position, that right for example should be implemented in a very consistent way. This stems from my story as interior minister: and we will put this on the streets for example under a seminar on migration topic, on the topic of internal security next spring.

Next year you have three important elections in the East Lats of Germany. In eastern Germany the populist AfD party is especially successful. How do you want to regain the AfD yokeer?

By our own self-power. The first is that even in these electoral campaigns, which we admit will not be easy, we will not be guided to other parties, but we will be presented firmly as local CDs. There are a number of regional topics, good balances, and in terms of opposition countries, even justified criticism of the government. More general topics, such as social issues, the topic of pensions, will surely arise, and we need to coordinate our positions well here in organizational views. But as I said, the basic position is: we want to convince people with our power and do it in such a way that the electors return to us once more.

In France the streets are on fire, people stand out on the street because they fight against social inequality. Can you learn anything from this about Germany?

AKK: I believe Germany is in another situation, because we have a system, with the social economy of the market, for example with our social partnership system, where many issues and conflicts are discussed and regulated with each other even in regular structures. I really hope that peace, social peace, which we have in this way, we can really keep up in Germany, because we see it, whether it's France or other states, how difficult it is, when the rules that are basically agreed upon are broken, and when the conflicts, completely justified in thematics, scale and violence.

In recent months you've been positioned in foreign policy, for example in Russia's direction, where you seek stronger sanctions, going further.

AKK: We should keep in mind once again, even now, the latest events in the Kerci Strait, which are beginning to say the discussion and the conflict is annexing against the international crime law, mixing in eastern Ukraine, and that we must make very clear, both through the sanctions, but also in response to the incident, that this way of taking the earth into Europe we cannot stand and that we cannot endure. It is very clear that the Azov Sea is not the Russian internal sea and it is also in European interest, in international interest that this be clarified and taken care of.

You said you felt no problem being a Chancellor. Do you believe, however, that Chancellor Merkel will complete the legislature and be three more years Chancellor?

AKK: So: we have a federal government that has been elected to this legislature. Angela Merkel has said she is available to complete this legislature. And the party convention made it very clear that you also want it and that's my personal wish. And my duty as leader of the ruling party I also see to see to it that this government has needed stability in order to complete the elective mandate.