Popular Bild newspaper, speaking of an “uprising” building against her, wrote this morning: “After 18 years in as the head of the CDU the criticism against her has never been so massive or so fierce.”
Conservative MP Sylvia Pantel said Mrs Merkel will face opposition at the next party congress, adding: “The simple nods of acceptance she is used to will not take place.”
Mrs Merkel has handed all the top ministries in Germany, including finance and foreign, to the SPD – the price the party demanded to form a government with her following an indecisive general election last year which saw her party’s majority slashed by the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany upstarts.
Former Merkel ally Friedrich Merz stated: “If the CDU still accepts this humiliation, then it has abandoned itself.”
MEP Michael von Abercron said: “The Chancellor’s authority is not only shaken within the party, but also in her administration as head of government.”
Middle-level politician Carsten Linnemann sees in the agreement the “beginning of the end of the People’s Party CDU”.
Another party official told a Bild: “The party is deteriorating.
“The Socialists are pulling us into the downfall.”