Germany will go to the polls on February 23, as agreed this Tuesday by the Social Democratic and Christian Democrat parliamentary leaders in the Bundestag. The agreement ends days of dispute over the election date. Last Wednesday, the federal chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, dismissed his finance minister, the liberal leader Christian Lindner, thus breaking up the government coalition 11 months before the end of the legislature.
To dissolve the Bundestag and activate the electoral calendar, Scholz plans to present a motion of confidence on December 16, according to reports Der Spiegel. Having been left without a parliamentary majority after the breakup of the coalition of social democrats, environmentalists and liberals, it is foreseeable that the motion will be lost and the calendar will be put in place to end the legislature early.
Initially, Scholz had defended presenting the motion of confidence on January 15 to hold the elections at the end of March. The head of the opposition and favorite in the polls to succeed him, the Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, instead wanted the chancellor to submit to the motion this week in order to hold the elections in January.
The agreement is a commitment between both parties that must be endorsed by the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is the one who must ultimately dissolve Parliament. Initially, the federal elections were scheduled for September 28.
