Berlin: Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to face a confidence vote in the German parliament on Monday, which he is expected to lose, potentially leading to an early election in February for the EU’s largest economy.
Scholz’s fractious three-party government collapsed on November 6 after the chancellor dismissed his finance minister over a prolonged dispute on revitalizing Germany’s stagnant economy. The minister’s pro-business party then withdrew from the coalition, leaving the remaining two center-left partners without a parliamentary majority.
Leaders of several major parties have agreed to hold a parliamentary election on February 23, seven months ahead of schedule. Since Germany’s post-World War II constitution prevents the Bundestag from dissolving itself, a confidence vote is required to trigger the early election.
What is likely to happen?
Scholz’s Social Democrats hold 207 seats in the Bundestag and are expected to support the chancellor, while their coalition partners, the Greens with 117 seats, plan to abstain. This leaves Scholz far from the 367 votes needed in the 733-seat chamber to win the confidence vote.
If Scholz loses, it will up to up to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to decide whether to dissolve the Bundestag. Steinmeier, who said last month that “this country needs stable majorities and a government that is capable of acting,” has 21 days to make that decision. Once parliament is dissolved, the election must be held within 60 days.
In practice, the campaign is already well underway.
Who is in the race?
As he formally requested the confidence vote on Wednesday, Scholz said that voters will “decide in the election how we answer the big questions that we face.”
Those, he said, include whether Germany decides to “invest strongly in our future,” secure jobs and modernize its industry, keep pension levels stable and “come closer to a just peace in Ukraine without Germany being drawn into the war.” Germany has become Ukraine’s biggest military supplier in Europe, but Scholz also has refused to supply long-range Taurus cruise missiles over concerns of escalating the war with Russia.
Center-right challenger Friedrich Merz on Saturday predicted “one of the hardest election campaigns” in modern German history, as Scholz’s Social Democrats “have their backs to the wall.” He said that it’s crucial to make the economy more competitive, because “the competitiveness of our economy is the precondition for everything else.”
Polls show Scholz’s party trailing behind Merz’s main opposition Union bloc. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, whose Greens are further back, is also bidding for the top job.
The far-right Alternative for Germany, which is polling strongly, has nominated Alice Weidel as its candidate for chancellor but has no chance of taking the job because other parties refuse to work with it.
Confidence votes are rare in Germany, a country of 83 million people that prizes stability. This is only the sixth time in its postwar history that a chancellor has called one.
The last was in 2005, when then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder engineered an early election that was narrowly won by center-right challenger Angela Merkel.
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