German chancellor loses vote of confidence in parliament, likely triggering snap election

BERLIN (LifeSiteNews) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has lost the vote of confidence in the Bundestag (German Parliament) after the breakdown of the government coalition.

On December 16, members of the Bundestag voted 394-207 against Scholz, with 116 abstentions. The vote of confidence was seen as a formality, and Scholz was expected to lose after the liberal FDP (Free Democratic Party) left the government coalition in early November.

As the German Tagesschau reported, Scholz met German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Bellevue Palace after the vote and asked him to dissolve the Bundestag.

Steinmeier has 21 days to decide whether he agrees and calls a snap election within 60 days. He is expected to do so and announce February 23 as the date. Had the coalition not dissolved, the next regular federal election would have taken place in September 2025.

Since the vote was only a formality, the parties used the debate in Parliament to campaign for the upcoming election. Scholz used his speech to launch an attack against the FDP. The “weeks of sabotage” by the Liberals under party leader Christian Lindner had not only damaged the coalition government but also democracy as a whole, he claimed.

CDU/CSU leader Friedrich Merz responded by defending the FDP and called the attack on Lindner “sheer insolence.”

Merz accused Scholz of leaving the country in one of the biggest economic crises in post-war history and failing at the EU level. “You are embarrassing Germany,” he stated. The Chancellor’s behavior in the European Union was “shameful,” Merz said.

Alice Weidel, co-head of the AfD (Alternative for Germany), slammed the left-wing government coalition, stating that its “damage” would burden Germany for decades to come. She pointed to the “decline” of the automotive and mechanical engineering industries and the exodus of the chemical industry due to “exploding energy costs.”

She viewed Donald Trump’s election as an opportunity to end the war in Ukraine through diplomacy while criticizing Scholz and Merz for making a “pilgrimage” to Kyiv to “throw even more good money after the money that has already been burned.”

Weidel warned that deploying German troops in Ukraine would risk Germany becoming a party to the war. She also stressed that “anyone who votes for Friedrich Merz is voting for war.”

The federal government will remain in office after losing the vote of confidence until the election of a new Parliament. However, the current coalition consisting of Scholz’s SPD (Social Democratic Party) and the Greens does not have the necessary majority and needs members of the opposition to vote alongside them if they want to pass any new laws.