Germany goes even earlier

We noted last month the prospect of an early election in Germany – then thought most likely to be next March – with the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s fractious coalition government. This week that advanced a step closer: Scholz bowed to opposition pressure and sought a vote of confidence on Monday, earlier than he had originally intended, in order to enable the election to be held on 23 February.

The confidence motion was duly defeated, 394 votes to 207. Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) were the only ones to vote in favor. The opposition parties all voted against it (including the Liberals or FDP, who had been part of the government until a few weeks ago), and the Greens, Scholz’s coalition partners, abstained.

Germany has fixed terms, so the election would not normally have been possible until next August. But a government that is defeated on a vote of confidence may recommend an early election to the president, who may dissolve parliament if they are satisfied that parliament has become unworkable. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is now considering that question, but there is no serious doubt that he will agree.

The last time this happened was almost twenty years ago, in 2005, when another SPD/Greens government also sought an early election. Unlike Scholz, however, its leader, Gerhard Schroeder, had not actually lost his majority: he just wanted to go early because his government was going backwards in the polls and he saw this as his last opportunity to retrieve the situation. So on that occasion the SPD had to engineer defeat by having some of its members abstain (which has the same effect as voting against, since the confidence vote requires an absolute majority).

Scholz had no need of such a ruse, but the Greens abstained on the motion anyway, since there had been some thought that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) might try to sabotage the early election plan by supporting the confidence motion. But even it had somehow been carried, it’s hard to see how an early election could have been avoided.

The opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) are currently riding high in the polls, but their lead has been dropping. Like Schroeder in 2005, Scholz’s hopes of a comeback are not fanciful: the SPD/Greens combination could well outvote the CDU. The FDP will side with the CDU if it makes it back into parliament, but at present voters seem to be blaming it (not unreasonably) for the breakup of the government and it has been polling below the 5% threshold.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz has promised not to partner with AfD; although he shares with them a strongly anti-immigrant position, they have diametrically opposite views on the war in Ukraine. But that leaves him with few other options. The Greens seem willing to join a CDU government (as they were back in 2017, when the FDP stayed aloof), although they will have some sharp policy differences, but it’s by no means certain that they will win a majority between them. (Recall that in 2005 the CDU managed to blow a 20-point lead in a couple of months.)

Failing that, Merz would have to choose between taking his chance with a minority government, or trying to form a grand coalition with the SPD. The latter alternative is nothing unusual; grand coalitions have governed for three of the last five parliamentary terms. But they make coherent policy-making difficult, which is one of the things that has led to Germany’s current malaise. And Merz is a rather more doctrinaire leader than Angela Merkel was – he and Scholz would be uncomfortable bedfellows.