Despite many hoping that President Trump’s re-election would serve as a unifying event for the fragmented German political scene, the country’s ‘traffic light’ coalition fell apart just hours after the Republican victory was confirmed as Chancellor Olaf Scholz sacked his finance minister, Christian Lindner of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) party.
The growing rift between Chancellor Scholz and the fiscally conservative Lindner has been obvious for months, but the final straw was the publication of the minister’s recent paper outlining proposals for “an economic turnaround with a partly fundamental revision of key political decisions.”
His recommendations included slashing taxes for companies, rolling back climate regulations, and further reducing welfare benefits—in other words, everything that Scholz’s social democrats (SPD) stand against.
Lindner “has broken my trust too often,” Scholz said, explaining his decision to fire the minister. He accused him of placing the short-term survival of his party over the interests of the country. “This kind of selfishness is utterly incomprehensible.”
The other three FDP ministers—for transport, justice, and education—did not need to leave the cabinet as well, but chose to do so voluntarily.
Now, the SPD and their sole remaining coalition partner, the Greens, have no choice but to govern with a minority cabinet until the coming snap elections tentatively scheduled for March following a constitutionally required no-confidence vote on January 15th.
To prevent the kind of political chaos that helped put the final nail in the coffin of Germany’s pre-war democracy in the 1930s, the constitution does not allow the ousting of the chancellor in times of governmental instability unless the opposition can muster a clear majority behind an alternative leader.
Therefore, Scholz will likely remain at the helm even though his ability to pass legislation is now heavily limited and dependent on the goodwill of ad hoc individual MPs from other parties, especially the opposition center-right CDU.
The most important priority is to adopt urgently needed budgetary measures. Scholz said he would ask CDU leader Friedrich Merz, Germany’s most likely next chancellor, to lend support to the legislative process despite political differences, as the country’s giant, crisis-stricken economy can’t wait for government action until next spring’s election.
Now the ball is in Merz’s court, as the CDU leader faces quite a dilemma: will he decide to cooperate and help end the budgetary deadlock and help other causes that are also important to him, such as continued aid to Ukraine; or will he decide not to hand a win to Scholz right before the election, possibly maximizing his own chances for victory?
In a statement Thursday morning, Merz seemingly took a third approach and began pushing for the snap elections to be held as early as possible.
“We simply cannot afford to have a government without a majority in Germany for several months and then have an election campaign and possibly several weeks of coalition negotiations. This has to happen quickly now,” the CDU leader said.
Merz stated that he would discuss the possibility of earlier elections with the chancellor later that day, as well as present his arguments to Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier during the two’s subsequent meeting.
Germany’s second most popular party, the national conservative Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) agrees with Merz in this question and called on Scholz to “immediately” call a no-confidence vote and let snap elections commence.
In their statement, AfD co-presidents Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel wrote:
The end of the traffic light [coalition] is a liberation for our country. The end of the self-proclaimed ‘progress coalition’, which has led Germany by leaps and bounds to the economic abyss, was more than overdue.
After months of standstill and countless self-centered therapy sessions, we now need a fundamental new political start quickly in order to lead the economy and the entire country out of the serious crisis into which it has fallen as a result of the ideology-driven policies of the SPD, Greens, and FDP.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz must now do the country one last service and immediately call a vote of confidence.
