Responding to Green party chairwoman Franziska Brantner’s Dec. 1 remark that her party views the Christian Democrats (CDU) as closer to the Greens than the Social Democrats are on foreign and Ukraine policy, CDU chairman Friedrich Merz said yesterday that, indeed, “in foreign and security policy, there is certainly more in common with the Greens than with the SPD. With regard to the economic policy of the Greens, however, the [CDU] Union is of a completely different opinion … we need a fundamental change of course there,” said Merz.