German Chancellor Olaf Scholz loses vote of confidence, paving the way for early elections
16 December 2024, 17:45
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has lost a vote of confidence, meaning the country is likely to have early elections next year.
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Some 394 of 717 voting members of the Bundestag, Germany's lower house, voted not to back Mr Scholz, who represents the centre-left Social Democrat Party (SPD).
Just 207 members supported him - well short of the 367 he needed - and 116 abstained.
Mr Scholz had been governing as the head of a three-party coalition until it fell apart in November, when he he sacked his finance minister.
He said that Christian Lindner had "broken" his trust, as the government sought to kickstart Germany's stagnating economy.
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Mr Lindner and his Free Democrat Party then quit the coalition, leaving the SPD with the Greens, and without a majority in parliament.
The elections had been due to take place in September, but the leaders of several major parties have now agreed to bring them forward seven months to February 23.
After the confidence vote, the German president now has three weeks to dissolve parliament, and elections must be held within 60 days after that.
Mr Scholz said on Monday that elections would determine if "we, as a strong country, dare to invest strongly in our future; do we have confidence in ourselves and our country, or do we put our future on the line?"
"Do we risk our cohesion and our prosperity by delaying long-overdue investments?," he asked.
Mr Scholz is trailing the Christian Democrats in the polls.
The centre-right party's leader Friedrich Merz told Mr Scholz: "You're leaving the country in one of its biggest economic crises in postwar history".
"You're standing here and saying, business as usual, let's run up debt at the expense of the younger generation, let's spend money, and the word 'competitiveness' of the German economy didn't come up once in the speech you gave today".
The Greens' Robert Habeck is also pushing to become Chancellor, but is behind both the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats in the polls.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is also doing well in the polls, but has very little chance of taking power as it is unlikely other parties would work with it in a coalition.
Mr Scholz, 66, has been Chancellor for just over three years.
