Germany’s coalition government collapsed last Wednesday, the same day Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election was confirmed. Some were surprised by the news, others acted in surprise: the viability of the so-called “traffic light coalition” – made up of social democrats from the SPD, greens and liberals from the FDP – had already been revealed to be untenable since September 1.
On that day, the eastern states of Saxony and Thuringia went to the polls. In the latter country, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won the elections with a historic result. In the first region, the AfD was a few tenths away from being the most voted force. This is the first victory in Germany for a far-right party – which in the case of the AfD comes close to neo-Nazism – in regional elections since the Second World War.
The three ruling parties, which had obtained a parliamentary majority in the 2021 federal elections, obtained a derisory result in the regional elections: the SPD obtained single-digit results, the worst in its history in both Länder; The Greens only managed to enter the regional parliament of Saxony; while the liberal FDP were literally pulverized in both states, with no parliamentary representation in any of them.
It is therefore no coincidence that the FDP ultimately blew up – or “dynaminated”, as several German media call it – the government led by Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Liberal Party Chairman and former Finance Minister Christian Lindner provoked the other two coalition parties with a budget offer for 2025 that was unaffordable for both the SPD and the Greens. The proposal to bring forward the elections made to Scholz by Lindner last Wednesday evening, during a meeting of the Executive which sought to put an end to the differences on these budgets, ended up exploding an Executive which had been dysfunctional for weeks, eyes of everyone.
Lindner’s calculation appears to have been that a premature end to tripartite government and early elections could save his party from extra-parliamentarism. Currently, most polls place the FDP below 5% across Germany, a threshold that allows it to be represented in the Bundestag (Federal Parliament). It would not be the first time that the FDP was excluded from the Bundestag after being part of a coalition government.
And now what?
For now, the roadmap is more or less clear. Germany is destined to hold early elections, you just need to know the date. After publicly settling scores with Lindner at his press conference last Wednesday, Chancellor Scholz declared that he would submit to a vote of confidence in the Bundestag on January 15. Scholz would need a parliamentary majority to be able to continue governing in a minority with the Greens until the end of the legislature in September next year. This scenario is simply utopian.
The CDU-CSU union, the main opposition party, will not support this minority government. In fact, the conservatives have been demanding an electoral lead for weeks and the far-right AfD for months. Lindner’s FDP will do everything in its power to ensure that Scholz falls as quickly as possible. The post-communists of the Left and its split led by Sarah Wagenknecht will not support him either. As things currently stand, the current chancellor will likely only have the votes of his party and the Green bench, very far from a parliamentary majority.
The president, candidate for chancellor of the conservative CDU-CSU union and leader of the opposition, Friedrich Merz, has already declared that he considers this date too late and asked Scholz to bring it forward as much as possible. Merz wants to hold a confidence vote next week and hold elections on January 19. The elections would thus take place one day before Donald Trump is sworn in in Washington.
The chancellor initially rejected Merz’s request, but this Friday, during his participation in the European summit in Budapest, he showed himself open to a renegotiation of the date: “It would be good if the democratic factions found an agreement on the laws to be approved before for the year that ends This agreement could answer the question of when is the right time for the vote of confidence, ”said Scholz.
The social democrat thus recognizes that his legitimacy to continue to govern in a minority until the end of the legislature is rare. All that remains is to know when Scholz will lose this vote of confidence and when the early elections will take place. Following the dissolution of Parliament by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, elections must be called within three months.
The “Trump factor”
Some in Berlin wonder whether Scholz’s government would have exploded if Kamala Harris had won the elections across the Atlantic. Trump’s indisputable victory seems to have accelerated the implosion of the tripartite because of what awaits Germany with a second Trump term: customs duties on German industry – already hit by the energy crisis after the power cut. Russian gas supplies – the likely end of the American military. and economic aid to Ukraine and the escalation of the trade war with China, a key trading partner of Germany.
In his public appearance Wednesday, Scholz discussed Trump’s arrival and the uncertainty it generates regarding the war in Ukraine and the security of Germany and Europe. The Social Democratic chancellor said these circumstances forced the German government to commit to investing more in defense and supporting domestic industry. All this was not viable with the dogmatism of austerity in public spending defended by the liberals of the FDP and their Finance Minister, Christian Lindner.
Trump’s return was a trigger for the negative internal dynamics that had been brewing in Germany for months. The historic result of the far right in the elections in Saxony and Thuringia is only a symptom of the political crisis this European country is going through. With the AfD in second position in all electoral projections, the outcome of this political crisis is now uncertain.
