Germany: CDU names Ilse Aigner as candidate for president

Chancellor Friedrich Merz 's Christian Democrats (CDU) on Monday confirmed that they would be putting forward Ilse Aigner as a candidate to be Germany 's next head of state.

Aigner's own CSU , the CDU's Bavarian sister party, already supports her candidacy — and the federal coalition partners the Social Democrats have also made clear they would endorse her nomination if the conservatives agree on it.

This means the 61-year-old has a good chance of taking up the largely ceremonial role when the special committee that elects a German president convenes in late January.

While Angela Merkel famously served as the country's most powerful politician for more than a decade, Germany has never had a female head of state.

Could Ilse Aigner become Germany's first female head of state?

What did Merz say about the nomination in Berlin?

Chancellor Merz announced the decision alongside Aigner at a Berlin press conference around 1 p.m. local time in the CDU's Konrad Adenauer House.

Merz said the "multifaceted, ambivalent" date of November 9 — anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Nazi-led November pogroms — symbolized both "democratic hope and regained freedom, as much as the failure of democracy and the most serious crimes in our history that followed from it."

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