"Until further notice, everything is staying the way it is, " declared Horst Seehofer, head of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Ms. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, at a party conference last month.
The CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, pushed her into promising tax cuts.
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The CDU's roots are in the Catholic church, especially in Germany's south (its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, or CSU, considers itself a separate Volkspartei).
The problem would be how to reconcile the FDP's comprehensive tax overhaul with the rather modest tax-cut plans of the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union.
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But she still has a possible rival in the shape of Edmund Stoiber, the leader of the Christian Democrats' Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, who wowed the delegates the next day.
The main one is that Mr Kohl's sturdiest loyalists, still quite strong in the party, and the Christian Democrats' right-wing Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, fear that Mrs Merkel is too young, inexperienced and left-wing.
The CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), objected to her idea to have everyone pay the same premiums, on the grounds that it was socially unjust and would anyway be a hard sell, and little is left of the original plan.
Mr Guttenberg is a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).
As Mrs Merkel's star has waned, so that of Edmund Stoiber, leader of the Christian Social Union, the Christian Democrats' Bavarian sister party, has brightened.
Mr Guttenberg, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) - the Bavarian sister party of Mrs Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) - was also stripped of his PhD by the University of Bayreuth last year after evidence of his plagiarism emerged.
Michelle Stanistreet, the union's deputy general secretary, said a handful of staffers from the tabloid's sister paper, the Sun, left work in solidarity with their News of the World colleagues on Thursday, but that no strikes were planned.
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