The German chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, dismissed this Wednesday his finance minister, the liberal leader Christian Lindner, after he proposed calling early elections in the face of the serious crisis that the coalition of social democrats, greens and liberals, which is in in the face of a possible breakup.
Lindner is the leader of the FDP, one of the three parties that make up the so-called ‘traffic light coalition’ along with the SPD and the Greens. The three parties have been part of the German executive since 2021, although in recent months their stability had eroded and rumors of a possible election had grown.
Lindner’s departure leaves this coalition on the verge of breaking up. Representatives of the three parties met this Wednesday to address the reasons that had separated their positions during this time, mainly the writing of the new budget, as well as the direction of economic policy. In this context, Lindner had put on the table the need for new elections, as reported by various German media. Scholz rejected this proposal and dismissed the minister.
As reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Scholz had demanded that Lindner lift his veto on opening his hand with the German public debt, something that the leader of the liberals, who for years have championed an economic policy of control of debt and deficit, at the expense of public spending.
The economic crisis that Germany is going through in recent years, the rise of the extreme right in some of the states and the fall in popularity of the parties that make up the Government were behind a crisis in the Executive that had been brewing for months. Not even some successes of Scholz’s party in some territories such as Brandenburg had given the Government any respite.
The president of the Liberals had given his government partners at the beginning of autumn a deadline until next Christmas to resolve the two main issues on which his party officially maintains differences with the Social Democrats and Greens: the federal budget for 2025 and the immigration issue. . If consensus is not reached, Lindner announced “an autumn of decisions.” A situation that has precipitated in recent weeks.
The breakup was precipitated by fundamental disagreements over the plans to relaunch the German economy, in its second year of recession, and over the budgets for next year, which are still in parliamentary process.
According to experts, the departure of the liberals from the Government opens up different scenarios, among them the possibility that Scholz’s social democrats and the greens try to govern as a minority or that the chancellor submits to a question of confidence and then calls early elections, which They could be held in March.
Another option is for Scholz to try to form a coalition with the conservative opposition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which, however, has not so far shown itself open to this possibility.
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