Merz picks Ilse Aigner to become Germany's first woman president

Friedrich Merz has named his candidate for Germany's top job — and it's a first. The chancellor told leaders of his centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at a dinner on Sunday that he will nominate Ilse Aigner for president, according to Al Jazeera. If it goes through, Aigner becomes the first woman to serve as Germany's head of state.

Aigner, 61, is speaker of the Bavarian state parliament and a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's Bavarian sister party. The two conservative allies are set to meet on Monday, where the nomination is expected to be confirmed. After that, her formal election is all but assured.

The road here was not smooth. The CSU floated Aigner's name earlier this year, but the CDU stalled on endorsing her while Merz weighed other options — a delay that strained ties between the sister parties, Al Jazeera reported. The Social Democratic Party, the junior partner in the governing coalition, has repeatedly said it backs her, easing the path for a joint candidate.

The vote itself falls to the Federal Convention, a body assembled only to choose a president. It will pick a successor to incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier on January 30. Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, took office in 2017 and hits the limit of two five-year terms in March 2027.

The job is mostly ceremonial: the president signs legislation into law and formally appoints ministers. But the office carries weight as a neutral arbiter above party politics and as a symbol of national unity.

Aigner's resume runs deep in German politics. She started out in local government, won a seat in the federal parliament in 1998, served as agriculture minister under former chancellor Angela Merkel, then returned to Bavaria, where she took the state parliament's top post in 2018.