Leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Friedrich Merz (L) looks on as and Bavaria's State Premier and leader of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) Markus Soeder speaks in Berlin. AFP
Friedrich Merz, head of the Christian Democrats (CDU), is currently tipped to replace Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose term the conservatives have slammed as "three lost years" over the stuttering economy.
A day after Scholz lost a parliamentary confidence vote he called to pave the way for the early elections, Merz claimed that the chancellor had "lost the confidence of a majority of the population a long time ago".
Merz -- a rival of his party's more moderate ex-chancellor Angela Merkel -- has vowed to orchestrate a return to the CDU's right-wing roots as he competes against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
In their party programme, the CDU and its Bavarian allies, the CSU, vowed to "stop illegal migration", strictly control Germany's borders and scale down benefits for rejected asylum seekers to a "bed, bread and soap" minimum.
Those demands may be softened in the coalition talks that typically follow German elections, but for now the alliance vowed to reverse two decades of more centrist rule dating back to the early Merkel years.
In their programme, the conservatives promised a "fundamental shift in migration policy" and criticised the Merkel years, without naming her, by declaring that "we also made mistakes in government -- and learnt from them".
They vowed to implement a tough law and order offensive with "zero tolerance" on crime, stepped up video surveillance in public spaces and efforts to "shut down mosques where hate and anti-Semitism is being preached".
To revive Europe's largest economy, which is expected to shrink for the second year in a row, the conservatives want to slash unemployment benefits and make "hard work worth it again".
The alliance also said it would reverse the legalisation of marijuana enacted by Scholz's three-party alliance with the Greens and the liberal FDP, which collapsed in acrimony in early November.
The CDU also said it opposed efforts to liberalise abortion rules and Germany's gender self-determination law, arguing that young people must not be allowed to change their gender without expert advice or a court decision.
Speaking at a joint press conference, CSU leader Markus Soeder summed up the parties' position as middle-class, social and conservative and "definitely not left-wing and not woke and not gendered".
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