dpa
Berlin
Germany is set to head to the polls on February 23 following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left coalition.
Parliamentary leaders from the country’s largest political parties - including Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the opposition conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) - reached an agreement on Tuesday on a timetable to call the election, sources said.
Scholz is expected to table a vote of confidence in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, on December 16. If, as expected, he loses the vote, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier can call for elections to be held within 60 days.
The agreement follows a week of wrangling in Berlin after Scholz fired his finance minister, Christian Lindner from the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), leading the party to withdraw from the unpopular three-way coalition with the SPD and Greens that came to power in 2021. The FDP’s exit - a product of months of acrimonious negotiations over the government’s proposed 2025 budget - left the chancellor without a majority in the Bundestag and effectively unable to govern.
Scholz has a mountain to climb if he is to retain his position, with his SPD polling on 15% and the Greens, who are likely to pick Economy Minister Robert Habeck as their candidate for chancellor later this week, currently on 10%.
The CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have a clear advantage in the polls, with 32% of voters signalling support for the centre-right bloc led by Friedrich Merz in the latest survey. The deal to hold elections on February 23 offers voters, politicians and business leaders much-needed clarity on Germany’s path forward following a political crisis that coincided with Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
Scholz initially proposed holding a vote of confidence in January ahead of a potential election date in late March. However, he faced huge pressure from opposition parties to bring the timetable forward amid demands for a quick election to provide leadership and direction for the country’s struggling economy.