German Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to lose the confidence of the Bundestag this Monday and then ask the President of the Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for parliamentary dissolution so that new elections can be held. Defeat is the result sought by the social democrats after breaking the tripartite coalition that had governed Germany since 2021 in November and remaining in the minority.
The session began at 1:00 p.m. with a speech by the chancellor and a debate that was scheduled to last for at least two hours, at the end of which the vote would take place.
Once Scholz has lost the question of confidence in the lower house of Parliament, the way will be clear to call the legislative elections for February 23, seven months before the scheduled end of the legislature. With the presentation of the electoral programs this Tuesday, everything will be ready for a campaign that will be brief, intense and wintery, with temperatures in the streets close to zero degrees.
The Fundamental Law of 1949, given the instability of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and the parliamentary chaos that preceded the rise of Nazism, shielded the possibilities of dissolving Parliament. The constitutional route available is to raise a question of trust with the aim of losing it. Willy Brandt already did it in 1972 and was repeated by Helmut Kohl in 1982 and Gerhard Schröder in 2005.
Now Scholz, who unlike Brandt, Kohl and Schröder lacks a majority since the breakup of the government coalition, wants to obtain what he wanted: the electoral advance. But the parliamentary defeat is, at the same time, the certification of a failure. That of the coalition with The Greens and the Liberal Democratic Party that he himself broke by dismissing the ministers of the latter party due to fundamental disagreements in economic policy.
The unknown, this Tuesday, is that Scholz could unexpectedly see his intention to lose the confidence of the Bundestag frustrated, and win the motion. It seemed clear that the Christian Democratic opposition, the liberals and the post-communist and populist left will vote against the chancellor. It is clear that his party, the SPD, will vote in favor. And even if the Greens, still their government partners, also voted in favor, there is a small margin for uncertainty. It would occur in the event that the deputies of the far-right party Alternative for Germany decide to support the chancellor with the sole purpose of frustrating his plan to bring forward the elections. Being the public vote, however, save to the Government could have an electoral cost for the extreme right.
To avoid surprises, the Greens have decided to abstain, so that, even if the extreme right supported the chancellor, he would not reach a majority. For the Government, it is about losing and in this sense it can be said today: objective achieved.
