The former chairman of the arch-conservative Values Union, Max Otte, has been expelled from the CDU. The CDU district party court in Cologne followed the request of the CDU federal executive board “because of party-damaging behavior”, the CDU Cologne announced on Wednesday in Düsseldorf.
Since Otte did not raise an objection by the end of the period on August 1, he is “now legally no longer a member of the CDU”. The Cologne CDU welcomes the district party court’s decision because it “reaffirms very clearly that any type of cooperation with the AfD violates the principles of the CDU and has consequences under party law”.
The exclusion procedure was initiated after the 57-year-old economics professor ran for the office of Federal President in mid-February at the suggestion of the AfD. Otte was a member of the CDU for a good 30 years. As early as April, he had announced during the ongoing proceedings that he would not oppose being thrown out.
He had already resigned at the end of January from the chairmanship of the Values Union, which is not an official association of the CDU but sees itself as a “conservative grassroots movement” in the Union.