German opposition wants confidence vote now

The leader of Germany's opposition Christian Democratic Union, Friedrich Merz, who hopes to take political advantage of the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-way traffic light coalition, says Europe needed to show strength during Donald Trump's second term as US president.

"Donald Trump is not impressed by weakness, only by strength, even opposition," Merz said. This, he added, would be how Europe could deal with the new government in Washington.

Merz and others want Scholz, from the center-left Social Democrats, to call for an immediate vote of confidence in his now minority government and snap elections. So far, however, Scholz is sticking to his call for a confidence vote in January.

Merz added that Germany must do more for its own security. He said the business model of importing cheaply, exporting expensively, and letting the United States pay for security "is now over."

"That's not so dramatic," he said. "We need to adjust to this, manage it, and take the necessary consequences." 

After his unsuccessful meeting with Olaf Scholz, Friedrich Merz also met German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Berlin's Bellevue Palace. 

The meeting lasted about an hour. 

Merz's conversation with the head of state is believed to have been about the roadmap to a quick new election.

However, details about the content or results of the conversation were not initially known. 

In a separate event, Steinmeier handed out certificates of discharge to three outgoing Free Democratic Party (FDP) ministers. 

They were Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the former Justice Minister Marco Buschmann and the former Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger. 

Transport Minister Volker Wissing remains in office as the only cabinet member appointed by the FDP, although he has left the party. His brief has now widened as Scholz also appointed him justice minister.

DW's political correspondent Matthew Moore is traveling with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Budapest, Hungary amid the government crisis: 

As he left Berlin for an informal meeting of European leaders on Thursday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz cut a relieved figure but a big question mark remains over how much authority he now has.

The Social Democrat (SPD) leader kicked the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) out of his coalition —  removing his ability to pass legislation.

Scholz wants to set the ball rolling for an election to take place around late March.

In the name of stability, however, the leader of the opposition CDU Friedrich Merz is demanding snap elections as soon as possible — driven in no small part by their high polling numbers.

Merz is said to have told Scholz in a one-to-one meeting that a lame duck chancellor wouldn’t even get a meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump.

It appears not to have swayed Scholz. He’s counting on a longer campaign to help rejuvenate his party’s standing among the German public.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will make a statement in the Bundestag on Wednesday next week, German news agency DPA reports. 

This comes after Germany’s three-party coalition collapsed after the sacking of Finance Minister and Free Democrats (FDP) head Christian Lindner. 

Scholz has announced a plan to hold a vote of confidence in January, which would allow for new elections to be held.

The opposition, meanwhile, is pushing for an immediate vote of confidence

German voters favor immediate elections, a survey revealed.

Some 65% of those surveyed support an immediate call for elections to Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. 33% said they agree with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s intention to hold them in March.

The survey, put out by German public broadcaster ARD, shows Germany’s biggest opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), would receive 34% of the votes.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would become Germany’s second-biggest party with 18%.

Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), meanwhile, would get 16% of the vote. 

The other two parties which made Germany’s now-collapsed coalition, the Green party and the business-focused Free Democrats (FDP),are both expected to lose parliament seats.

The Greens would receive 12% in comparison, dropping from 15% in the current Bundestag.

The FDP, meanwhile, would fall from their current 11% share to 5% support, putting the party at the minimum threshold to enter the Bundestag.   

Russia has said that the collapse of Germany’s coalition government is due to the country no longer being supplied with Russian gas.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed in a statement on the Telegram messaging platform that the German economy was no longer growing as strongly as a consequence of ending reliance on Russian gas.

"Berlin has failed to retain Russian gas, which is vital for its citizens and its industrial and economic complex," she said. 

Zakharova also commented on the timing of the German government's collapse, and the fact that it coincided with the re-election of US President Donald Trump.

Russia had long been Germany’s most important energy supplier, but sanctions over Russia's war in Ukraine since 2022 led to a sharp reduction in gas deliveries to Germany, where energy prices consequently spiked.

The Opposition is neatly putting the chancellor under pressure. 

There is no plausible reason why Olaf Scholz couldn't hold a confidence vote in the coming days, so that Germany could go to the polls in January. 

If he were to do that, he could clearly count on the support of the CSU and CDU for some of his legislative projects. Even the Greens, the SPD's remaining coalition partners, are beginning to ask themselves why they should stay as a "lame duck" administration for so long. 

If the chancellor doesn't come up with a persuasive explanation, it could damage his party, as well as the Greens. So there could still be movement on this in the next week or two.

Several top European politicians spoke to reporters as they arrived in Budapest for the European Political Community summit on Thursday, while Chancellor Scholz had to push his arrival time back to Thursday evening, provisionally. 

Some have featured in these updates in writing already, but you can watch a selection of key quotes here.

A German government spokesperson said Chancellor Olaf Scholz will not be traveling to Azerbaijan for the UN's climate conference next week as originally planned.

Scholz had been scheduled to fly to Azerbaijan late Monday, ready to participate in discussions on Tuesday. 

The 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP29, runs from November 11-22.

Germany's government collapsed because of a dispute over the country's so-called debt brake that Lindner reportedly refused to soften to plug a €10 billion budget gap. 

In Germany, the federal government and the 16 states are obliged to balance their books and are practically prohibited from taking out extra loans. This requirement is known colloquially as the "debt brake."

Why does Germany have this rule? Read DW's explainer.

Chancellor Scholz and conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz, who earlier called for a confidence motion "next week at the very latest," held closed-door talks at the Chancellery in Berlin.

Scholz has said a snap poll could take place as soon as January.

However, Christian Democrat Merz met Scholz briefly on Thursday afternoon to push for a much shorter timetable.

Merz was said to have offered that his conservatives could discuss upcoming legislation and how they might support the minority government — but only if the vote of confidence was moved forward to take place next week. Scholz, however, wants to stick to the timetable for the vote of confidence next year.

The German news agency DPA said Merz had left the meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin empty-handed. 

Merz, who hopes to replace Scholz as chancellor, then headed to Bellevue Palace to meet German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to discuss how to proceed.

On social media site X, formerly Twitter, Germans were having a field day with the headlines from Thursday.

Satirical news site Postillion mocked Scholz's perceived lack of verve and charisma by joking that "after a hard reckoning with Lindner, Scholz's pulse skyrockets" to 23 beats per minute.

One popular comedic account joked that while everyone else was fighting, popular Bavarian premier Markus Söder — who regularly posts photos and videos of himself on social media, sometimes in costumes — was too busy looking at his own photo to notice.

Others brought back old pictures and videos of Angela Merkel, including one where she says: "Maybe God only created the FDP to test us."

A co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel said at a press conference in Berlin on Thursday that the "traffic light" or Ampel coalition — with this German nickname based on the three parties' red, yellow and green colors — "came to an end just as unworthily as it governed." 

"That it will end early is the only good thing one can say about three years of an Ampel government," Weidel said. She called its early demise a "liberation," using a German football term for when a defender clears the ball far away in what could otherwise have been a dangerous situation.

She also called Scholz's handling of the split with Lindner "unworthy," saying, "That's not the way you deal with former coalition partners, pushing blame onto each other." 

No German mainstream parties are currently willing to ally with the AfD in a coalition at the federal level, saying their positions are irreconcilable. But Weidel called for those to the right of center to reconsider. 

"It's the responsibility of the [CDU/CSU] and FDP to come to terms with the second-strongest opposition party according to the polls, the AfD, to enable a forward-looking government capable of action, without the SPD and the Greens," she said. "The AfD stands ready." 

She also called for a much quicker roadmap towards snap elections than the one proposed by Scholz. 

"To put a confidence motion to parliament only on January 15 is irresponsible. You can't carry on with a rump government formed out of a govermment that nobody wanted anymore. Chancellor Scholz lost the confidence of the German population long ago. And he must immediately clear the path for new elections and a confidence motion," she said. 

As a result, Weidel said her party would appeal for a confidence vote to take place in the Bundestag next week.

Free Democrat leader Christian Lindner, whose dismissal as finance minister sparked the coalition's collapse, has said he plans to lead the party in the next German elections. 

Lindner said this was his wish, at least in the event that he still had the party's support, to do so. 

The campaign could be a difficult one for the fiscally conservative party that takes a liberal stance on more personal issues, with it currently polling below the 5% threshold it would need to guarantee representation in the Bundestag parliament.

Lindner also repeated his criticism of how Scholz handled his dismissal on Wednesday. 

"Part of the responsibilities of statecraft are a public style that ensures that democracy is not damaged," Lindner said. 

He said he had recommended to Scholz that he organize snap elections in an orderly manner if the budget impasse in the coalition could not be resolved. 

"Instead, yesterday [there was] this staged sacking," Lindner said of his ejection. "The right thing would have been to put a confidence question [to parliament] and [then call] new elections."