BERLIN (Dow Jones)–The designated new leader of the Free Democratic Party, or FDP, Health Minister Philip Roesler, will also become Germany’s new Economy Minister, a high-ranking person in the FDP said Tuesday.
The FDP is the junior coalition partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. FDP party officials had no immediate comment.
An FDP party convention Friday is slated to choose Roesler as the new party leader, supplanting Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, whose abysmally low popularity is blamed for contributing to a series of disastrous losses for the FDP in regional elections. In recent nationwide opinion polls, the party is seen favored by less than the 5% of voters necessary to grant it seats in Germany’s parliament.
Current Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle will lose his post, and instead become the party’s new parliamentary leader, the person in the FDP told Dow Jones Newswires.
Roesler in April said that if elected party chairman, he would also become the new vice chancellor in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet–replacing Westerwelle.
The FDP is trying to renew itself with a series of young faces. Next to Roesler, who is 38, the 34-year-old Daniel Bahr is slated to supplant Roesler as health minister, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported Tuesday.
Bruederle, a 65-year-old FDP veteran, due to his experience is seen as competent for tactical negotiations within the government coalition as parliamentary leader, but less useful in winning votes back for the party in his current function as economy minister.
Bruederle has spoken out against a too-hasty exit from nuclear energy at a time when Germany’s electorate has turned increasingly against atomic power after the disasters at Fukushima, Japan, and he is facing the rejection of mainly younger FDP members, who blame him for recent electoral losses.
In late March, a coalition of Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the FDP lost the key state of Baden-Wuerttemberg against a coalition led by the anti-nuclear Green party, which is also rapidly gaining ground in nationwide opinion polls at the cost of most other parties.
WSJ: Update
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