Scholz loses confidence, paves the way for elections in Germany
After the dissolution of the Bundestag, the country goes back to the polls: agreed date 23 February. The election campaign gets into full swing: economic crisis, war in Ukraine and migration are already the topics of contention
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Key points
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Everything went according to plan: at 1pm yesterday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz took the floor of the Bundestag to ratify his inability to remain in office until the end of his term and to bring the country to an early vote. After the sacking of the Finance Minister and leader of the Liberals, Christian Lindner, and with the consequent implosion of the Semaphore coalition, the step was obligatory.
The stages
."This is the sixth time a chancellor has asked the Bundestag for a vote of confidence. In three instances, with Willy Brandt, Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder, it was done in order to achieve early elections. And that is also my goal,' Scholz said in his speech.
So it shall be. After a relatively short but very heated debate, 394 of the 717 deputies present voted against him, 207 in favour and 116 abstained. After receiving the no-confidence vote, the chancellor immediately went to the Bellevue Palace, to the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to ask him to dissolve parliament and call new elections, about seven months ahead of the natural expiry date. The date agreed by the parties is 23 February and Steinmeier has already made it known that he intends to go along with the timetable indicated by Scholz.
Polls
.The election campaign is thus entering more and more into the thick of it. In the polls, the SPD is floating between 15 and 18%, detached from the Cdu (30-34%) and behind even the ultra-right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (17-20%). The Greens, who stood by Scholz's side after the collapse of the coalition, are below 14% and Lindner's Liberals are in danger of not reaching the 5% threshold and thus could remain outside Parliament. The consensus of the last party to enter the German political arena, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (Bsw), is subject to strong fluctuations (4-8%), after its excellent results in the eastern Länder.
After the polls close, it will take weeks to form a new majority coalition, which will most likely be led by the leader of the Cdu, Friedrich Merz. Excluding any form of collaboration with Afd, on the basis of the current numbers, a new alliance with the SPD is envisaged, in a re-edition of the Große Koalition, which, however, does not look so great. Then it might be necessary to open up to a third partner, perhaps the Greens, or perhaps the Bsw itself.
