Time runs out for Olaf Scholz

BERLIN — The question now is not whether Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government will survive, but for how long. 

Germans faced a stark split screen Sunday night: As France’s president responded to a withering defeat by the far right in the European election by declaring his intention to dissolve the national assembly, their own chancellor performed a disappearing act. 

Scholz, the biggest loser of the night, put in a cameo at his party headquarters for a few selfies before going AWOL, leaving to the help the unenviable task of explaining his Social Democrats’ worst showing in a federal election in over a century.  

If Scholz believed he could dodge a reckoning after his party was beaten into a humiliating third place by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, he, like most recreants, is likely mistaken. Scholz says an early election is not in the cards, but it’s likely not up to him.

“The fact is the coalition government has been voted out, and Olaf Scholz must call for new elections like Macron,” Bavaria’s premier, Markus Söder, said on German public television after the election.

Even a commentator for the left-leaning “Die Zeit” called for a new election as soon as this summer. “Just as in France, the European election was a vote of no confidence in the government,” Alan Posener wrote.

Indeed, despite the Scholz camp’s best efforts to shield him, there was no denying that Sunday’s election result — which showed that only 31 percent of Germans supported one of the three parties in Germany’s coalition amid record voter turnout — was a fiasco. 

Just two-and-a-half years into his tenure, Scholz’s fractious government has reached a breaking point. Beset by infighting and — in the view of most critics, simple incompetence — Scholz has presided over the most unpopular government in modern German history, with more than two-thirds of Germans expressing dissatisfaction with the coalition. His personal approval rating has also set a negative record, with more than 70 percent of Germans dissatisfied with the job he’s done. 

After mismanaging a landmark reform to shift Germany’s heating infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewable energy, Scholz’s government suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the country’s highest court, which ruled its budget unconstitutional. The decision in November robbed the coalition of tens of billions of euros it was counting on to fund the rest of its agenda.

The alliance has been at loggerheads ever since, with the two left-leaning parties, Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens in constant battle with the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP), led by Finance Minister Christian Lindner.  

Put simply, the SPD and Greens want to spend more money and the FDP, citing Germany’s constitutional debt brake (and their own fiscal orthodoxy), less. 

That standoff is bound to come to a head in the coming weeks as the coalition parties head into final round of negotiations over the 2025 budget. The parties want to reach an agreement by early July before the summer break, but with all sides digging their heels in an effort to salvage their political fortunes, an agreement seems unlikely. 

The SPD and Greens want to spend more money. | Axel Heimken/Getty Images

Failure to reach a compromise could offer the FDP, which has been the odd man out in the coalition from the beginning, to exit the alliance. Despite persistent tensions over fundamental issues such as the budget, the FDP has been reluctant to jump ship for fear of angering voters.

But following the dismal results for the SPD and Greens in the EU election, the political calculus for the FDP may have shifted.

How Germany’s coalition dies

In most parliamentary systems, the unwritten rules of democratic decorum would compel the country’s leader to call a new election after the kind of crushing defeat Scholz suffered on Sunday.

Not so in Germany. For better or worse, German governments are almost impossible to kill.

In order to avoid a repeat of the helter-skelter politics of the Weimar era, which contributed to the rise of the Nazis, the framers of Germany’s postwar Basic Law sought to ensure stability by creating a political system that required conflicts to be resolved quickly with as little disruption as possible.

As such, they set a high bar for snap elections. There are two avenues for a confidence vote in Germany. Under the first, known as a “constructive vote of no confidence,” the parliament can oust a chancellor, but only if it votes in a replacement within 48 hours.

Given that the current coalition’s main problem is the parties’ inability to agree on key policies, and not the chancellor, that course seems unlikely.

Under a second scenario, the chancellor can call a confidence vote (in the event, for instance, that a coalition party defects). If he loses, it would be up to the president to decide whether to call a new election.

That means that even if Scholz were to call a confidence vote and lose, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, instead of calling a new election, might ask the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) to try to form a government based on the results of the 2021 election, when the party finished second. If it fails to build a coalition, he could then call for a new poll.

That circuitous process is why confidence votes in postwar Germany are rare (there have only been five) and are usually tactical moves by chancellors seeking to bolster their political standing. 

The only case where a chancellor was removed unwillingly was in 1982, when the FDP abandoned its alliance with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s SPD, a constructive confidence vote that he lost.

Back then, there were only three parties in the Bundestag, however, with the FDP playing kingmaker. The FDP switched its allegiance to Helmut Kohl’s CDU and he became chancellor without a new election. Kohl, wanting a firm endorsement from the electorate, called another confidence vote soon after taking office, ensuring he would lose it so that he could ask the president to call an early election.

Just two-and-a-half years into his tenure, Scholz’s fractious government has reached a breaking point. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The tactic worked; Kohl’s party won the election and he remained chancellor until 1998. 

Given that the Christian Democrats now enjoy a 14-point lead in the polls, which if borne out at the ballot box would allow them to dominate any coalition, the party would be likely to pursue a similar course. Party leader Friedrich Merz has stopped short of calling on Scholz to set the process in motion, but has made it clear that he is ready to take over.

For Scholz, calls for a snap election are likely to grow louder in September, when three state elections are held in the east of the country, where the AfD is strongest; the party is likely to win all three contests.

It’s just another reason why Scholz’s days as chancellor may well be numbered.