The European party families are not in a particularly good financial position. Additionally, their chairmanship has always been an honorary office. This has always been the case when the party leader was also a European Parliament member and thus had tenure security. With Manfred Weber from Lower Bavaria, elected head of the EPP in May, the European Christian Democrats could now ring in a new era financially and say goodbye to the top post just for honor’s sake, as Markus Grabitz reports.