Germany faces snap election as Scholz’s coalition crumbles
Chancellor Scholz calls for a snap vote in Germany after firing his finance minister
German opposition leader Friedrich Merz said Chancellor Olaf Scholz should submit to a vote of confidence by early next week at the latest, paving the way for fresh elections as soon as mid-January.
Social Democrat Scholz brought an end to his three-party alliance with the Greens and the Free Democrats late Wednesday when he sacked FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
The chancellor called for the next scheduled election to be brought forward from September to March but Merz and his conservative CDU/CSU alliance, which has a big lead in opinion polls, want the vote to happen sooner.
“It is important that we now very quickly put responsibility for the composition of the German Bundestag back into the hands of the voters,” Merz told reporters in Berlin Thursday after a meeting of his parliamentary caucus.
“That’s why I’m going to ask the chancellor in a conversation this afternoon to clear the way for this,” he added. “There is also a whole series of international commitments, conferences and decisions in the European Union that now require a German federal government that is capable of acting.”
