Germany set for early elections in February after government collapse

BERLIN - Germany is set for early elections in February following the collapse of its center-left coalition government last week, leaders of the parliamentary groups involved said Tuesday.

Rolf Mützenich, parliamentary group chairman of the governing Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Friedrich Merz, head of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) - which makes up the largest opposition group alongside the Christian Social Union (CSU) - said they agreed that the election should be held Feb. 23, seven months earlier than originally planned.

The vote can take place only if the SPD’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz - as anticipated - loses a parliamentary vote of confidence, expected to be held Dec 16.

“I think that will help us to finally focus on the question: ‘Who is the better chancellor for Germany?’” Mützenich told reporters in Berlin.

Merz, whose CDU leads in national opinion polls, made no secret of the fact that he would have preferred an even earlier date for the vote of confidence. In the meantime, the parliament will “remain capable of making decisions,” Merz insisted.

The election decision comes less than a week after Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner following months of disagreement over economic policy and the federal budget, prompting the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which Lindner leads, to quit the governing coalition.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will have the final say on the date for the elections, originally scheduled for Sept. 28 of next year. If Scholz loses the vote of confidence, Steinmeier has 21 days to dissolve the parliament, and early elections must then be held within 60 days.

Steinmeier released Lindner and two other FDP ministers from their cabinet positions Thursday. After less than three years in government, the ruling alliance of Scholz’s SPD, the Greens and the FDP - named the “traffic light” coalition after the parties’ colors - was over. One FDP member left the party, enabling him to stay on as transport minister.

The breakup of the coalition left the SPD and the Greens in a minority government and Berlin in a state of uncertainty, prompting leading opposition figures to call for a vote of confidence in Scholz that the chancellor had originally planned for Jan. 15. Scholz had tried to hold out until the new year in hopes of finding case-by-case majorities to pass laws in December - something the opposition ruled out without an earlier date for the vote of confidence.

Given European anxiety amid Donald Trump’s election win in the United States and Russia’s war against Ukraine, observers said time was of the essence to restore stability in Germany, Europe’s largest economy and the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine behind the United States.

The shaky minority government is also unlikely to find the required numbers among lawmakers to pass its 2025 budget. However, provisional budget management - which enables the government to cover necessary expenditures such as debt obligations, essential social welfare spending and maintenance of administrative institutions - would avoid a government shutdown, unlike in the United States.

While not passing a budget would mean months of uncertainty for Germany’s industry, sources from Germany’s budget committee told Reuters last week that Berlin will still be able to provide most of the $4.3 billion pledged to Ukraine in the draft 2025 budget as the funds are largely committed appropriations.

At a meeting in Budapest last week, European officials said news of the coalition collapse in Germany added uncertainty at an already tumultuous time as the continent’s leaders reckoned with the reality of a second Trump administration. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told reporters in the Hungarian capital that it was “important that Germany has elections soon, because we need a strong Germany.”

German electoral authorities cautioned, however, that rushing to a January vote could result in logistical hurdles and “unforeseeable risks” to the country’s election integrity.

Originally dubbed the “coalition of progress,” Germany’s three-party alliance quickly began to stumble over deep ideological differences - particularly when it came to the country’s finances, leading to a fight over the budget that crippled the government.

While Scholz’s SPD and the Greens favored state- and debt-financed policies, the FDP held on to the country’s constitutionally enshrined “debt brake” to the bitter end. Considered a fiscal straitjacket by critics, the debt brake is designed to force balanced budgets and can be suspended only in exceptional circumstances - most recently in response to the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The coalition was also widely considered a marriage of convenience as Germany’s big-tent parties struggled in opinion polls and the political landscape became more splintered - a challenge that could prove to be even more difficult come spring because of the popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is polling second, as well as emergence of the pro-Russian, left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, which was founded this year.