HAMBURG (dpa-AFX) - The CDU's federal chairman Friedrich Merz sees the current poll results for his party as an incentive for the 2023 election year. "After all, we don't just want to be crisis winners because the government is not good enough," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Tuesday during a visit to the Aurubis copper smelter in Hamburg. After the repeat of the parliamentary elections in Berlin in just under five weeks, new state parliaments will also be elected this year in Bremen (May), Bavaria and Hesse (both in the fall).

He said the CDU had set itself a lot of thematic goals for the election year. "We start with economy, energy and climate next weekend in Weimar," Merz said. At the closed-door meeting of the federal executive committee, he said, a comprehensive paper is to be adopted that will show how the CDU envisions economic policy, climate policy and energy policy as a unity in the future. The visit to Europe's largest copper smelter in Hamburg was also intended to help him prepare for this.

"I don't want us to just profit from the fact that others are not good enough. I want us to become better," Merz said. In doing so, he said, the CDU "must be able to do more than just countryside and rural areas." "The CDU must also be able to do big cities," he said. That's why, he said, he was also doing his best to support the Hamburg CDU under its chairman, Christoph Ploß, a member of the Bundestag. "And if we can do both - big cities and rural areas, then we will also win elections in Germany."

According to the ARD "Deutschlandtrend" poll by infratest dimap published Jan. 5, the CDU/CSU would come in as the strongest party with 29 percent of the vote in a federal election. The SPD would get 18 percent and the Greens 19 percent. The AfD would be the fourth strongest party with 15 percent, ahead of the FDP (6 percent) and the Left Party (5)./fi/DP/jha