Next German president should be a woman, says Merz

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said he wants a woman to become the next person to hold the country’s largely ceremonial presidency for the first time.

Elections to replace president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a social democrat who has been in office since 2017, are set for Jan 30.

“My mind is made up on one point: it has to be a woman,” the German chancellor declared, according to sources within his centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party.

Merz did not, however, list any potential candidates while speaking at a closed-door meeting of local CDU officials, the party sources added.

Steinmeier’s replacement will be elected by an assembly of some 1,260 voters, mostly made up of members of the two houses of parliament, along with some representatives from civil society.

Among the potential candidates within the CDU are Bundestag speaker Julia Kloeckner, education minister Karin Prien and ex-defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

The CDU’s sister party in Bavaria, the CSU, has already put forward the southern region’s parliamentary speaker Ilse Aigner to succeed Steinmeier.