A fiery Olaf Scholz brought down his own government as planned on Monday with a promise, if re-elected as German chancellor, of multibillion investment to salvage Germany’s “wretched” infrastructure.
German voters will choose a new Bundestag seven months early after Mr Scholz lost a confidence motion on Monday. Immediately after the expected result the chancellor visited president Frank Walter Steinmeier to ask him dissolve the Bundestag early and call a snap federal election, most likely on February 23rd.
Some 394 MPs of the 733-seat Bundestag voted against the chancellor in a confidence vote while 207 voted in favour and 116 MPs – mostly Greens – abstained.
Mr Scholz defended his three-year record in office on Monday while launching his re-election bid. The outgoing Social Democratic (SPD) chancellor told parliament Germany’s decade-long “short-sighted” obsession with balanced budgets had “created an unaffordable burden on our future”.
After moving away from that practice since 2021 Mr Scholz has promised further investment in public infrastructure and defence, through “more flexible” financial means parallel to the federal budget and its self-imposed fiscal limits.
Germany’s snap election, he said, was effectively a referendum on “whether we move forward with energy and determination or a small-minded and hesitant way”.
This shift was “so fundamental a decision that it has to be made by the sovereign themselves, by voters”.
In what may have been his last speech as chancellor, directed at voters, he said any SPD-led government would defend welfare spending and maintain his administration’s cautious strategy on Ukraine. He also lashed out at the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), his former coalition partners, for lacking “the necessary moral maturity” for office and “planning the sabotage of the government from within”.
Opposition leader and chancellor hopeful Friedrich Merz, head of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), suggested the Scholz-led “traffic light” three-way coalition of SPD, FDP and Greens had fallen apart early “because absolutely nothing fit”.
After years of flat growth, the CDU leader noted the chancellor had failed to address Germany’s dwindling competitiveness. Mr Merz described as “embarrassing” the performance of Mr Scholz at EU level and contrasted his ambitious plans with how the SPD had co-ruled for six of the last seven parliamentary terms in Berlin.
“Were you on another planet in that 22 out of 26 years?” asked Mr Merz, whose CDU is leading polls on 34 per cent.
In second place in polls is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), shunned by other parties, with 16 per cent, while the SPD has 15 per cent.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel described Germany as a country “flooded with migrants”, of people “squeezed” by taxes and inflation and companies “on the run”.
Opinion polls suggest the next Bundestag will have at least a quarter of MPs from right- and left-wing populist parties.
A growing force is an eponymous left-conservative BSW alliance lead by Sahra Wagenknecht. Speaking to chancellor Scholz, the BSW leader said: “Three years of decline in our country and you are looking for a four-year extension – that’s cheek.”
Outgoing economics minister Robert Habeck, leading the upcoming Green campaign, warned that post-election Germany might join its European neighbours of France, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands in struggling to find a majority or even a functioning administration.
“We have great insecurity at a time when insurance is needed,” said Mr Habeck. “It’s unlikely the next government will have it easier as it’s unlikely that our reality will have changed.”
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