Berlin: Germany is set to hold fresh elections on February 23, eleven weeks after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition, with sources on Tuesday saying the Social Democrats, Greens and conservatives had reached a compromise on timing.
Opposition parties wanted a vote as early as January, warning Germany risked being left rudderless at a time of economic crisis and as Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory poses new diplomatic challenges.
But Scholz warned that the January vote originally sought by Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative opposition, would overstretch electoral authorities during the holiday- and virus-packed winter season and risk leaving parties unprepared.
“It is important that we get new elections as soon as possible,” Carsten Linnemann, general secretary of Merz’s Christian Democrats, told public TV before the date became known.
To trigger new elections, Scholz must call and lose a confidence vote in parliament.
The timing of the confidence vote remains open, though local media said it could come in mid-December.
Scholz, who for now runs a minority government with the backing of the Greens, hopes to secure enough opposition support to pass laws to protect the Constitutional Court from the far-right and to fund Ukraine before leaving office.
His government collapsed after months of wrangling between the two remaining parties and their erstwhile coalition partner, the neoliberal Free Democrats, who demanded spending cuts on a scale their left-wing partners were unwilling to countenance.
(Reporting by Andreas RinkeWriting by Thomas EscrittEditing by Friederike Heine and Christina Fincher)
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