Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has dissolved parliament and called a snap election on 23 February after Olaf Scholz’s fractious three-way coalition collapsed three years into its mandate.
The national vote will come seven months ahead of schedule amid a rocky stretch of unusual political turmoil for the EU’s top economic power, with growth rates flatlining, industry in crisis and the far right on the rise.
Steinmeier, as head of state, made the formal step to dissolve the Bundestag after Scholz, the chancellor, deliberately lost a confidence vote in parliament on 16 December in order to trigger a general election. The president said that in “difficult times” Germany needed a “government that is capable of taking action”, after months of bitter squabbling within Scholz’s centre-left-led coalition.
Although Scholz, a Social Democrat, is standing for a second term, polls indicate that the centre-right opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, will lead his Christian Union (CDU/CSU) bloc to victory in eight weeks’ time, returning it to power for the first time since Angela Merkel left office in 2021.
One week after a deadly Christmas market attack in Magdeburg by a Saudi-born doctor who repeatedly railed online against Muslims and the German state, Steinmeier – whose office is largely ceremonial – warned in a short speech at the Bellevue Palace in central Berlin, the president’s official residence, against allowing “hatred and violence” to erode German society.
“Go and vote and cast your ballot in the knowledge that yours could be the decisive one,” he told Germans. “Protect and strengthen our democracy.”
Steinmeier warned, however, of “outside influence” in the campaign, specifically citing recent “open and blatant” attempts to sway the vote on the social media channel X, used by its owner, Elon Musk, last week to endorse the anti-migration, anti-Islam Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
Merz’s CDU/CSU has been leading in the polls by a double-digit margin most of this year with about 31% support, while the AfD has ridden a series of strong performances in European and state elections to be placed second in voters’ favour with about 18% backing.
Although the alleged Magdeburg attacker, who has lived in Germany since 2006, had expressed his support for the AfD in several social media posts, the party has pointed to the car-ramming attack that killed five and injured more than 200 as evidence that Germany needs a radically stricter immigration policy.
The interior minister, Nancy Faeser, this week urged the party not to try to capitalise on the tragedy. “To the AfD, I can only say: any attempt to exploit such a terrible act and to abuse the suffering of the victims is despicable,” she told the Funke Media Group.
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All the mainstream parties have pledged not to work with the far right after the election. Because the CDU/CSU is unlikely to win an absolute majority, it is expected to form a coalition with a party to its left. Most likely at this point is a tie-up with the Social Democrats (SPD), who are polling at about 16%.
The timing could hardly be worse for Germany’s political gridlock, with a new government not expected to be in place until the late spring, as the incoming US president Donald Trump threatens biting tariffs against the all-important car industry and Russia makes gains in Ukraine despite Berlin’s billions of euros in military assistance to Kyiv.
The current parliament will remain in place until the new one is elected. “Our democracy works, also in times of transition,” Steinmeier said, calling for an election campaign marked by “respect and decency”.