BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister Wednesday, effectively ending his three-party ruling coalition and destabilising his centre-left government just as the election of Donald Trump in the United States presented Europe with new economic and security challenges.
"I would have liked to have spared you this difficult decision," Scholz said during an impromptu news conference in the chancellery Wednesday evening, after several days of talks aimed at salvaging the coalition. "Especially in times like these, when uncertainty is growing," he added.
Scholz vowed to keep governing until the end of the year and then demand a confidence vote in parliament in January, a test he may fail. That would open the way to early elections, a rarity in Germany since World War II, possibly in March.
The extraordinary trouble in Berlin leaves the European Union (EU) ever more rudderless at a particularly difficult time. Francess government is in a crisis after elections there this year yielded a deadlocked parliament, and Russia has made important advances on the battlefield in Ukraine and continues to threaten Europe broadly.
Now Europe faces the possibility of a trade war with the United States and a weakening of the Nato alliance — both of which Trump has threatened — as Germany, its most populous country, becomes mired in political instability as well.
The collapse of the coalition in Germany came after the leaders of the three parties — Scholz's Social Democrats, the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats — had mostly stopped talking to one another in recent weeks over widening disputes in negotiations for a new federal budget.
On Wednesday night, the resentment between Scholz and Christian Lindner, the leader of the Free Democrats and his finance minister, who spoke with reporters 30 minutes after the chancellor, was on clear display.
"Olaf Scholz has sadly shown that he does not have the strength to give our country a new start," said Lindner, who called Scholz's suggestions to promote economic growth "dull and unambitious."
Scholz told reporters Lindner had acted irresponsibly for not being willing to compromise.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany during a gathering with international leaders at the Chancellery in Berlin on Oct 18, 2024. (Photo: New York Times)
The coalition, which has governed Germany since the former chancellor, Angela Merkel, left office in 2021, was an uneasy set of political bedfellows from the start. It was the first three-party coalition since the early 1960s, one of the reasons, many in the government say, for its instability, frequent leaks and paralysis.
The coalition’s collapse is stunning for a country long known for plodding and predictable consensus that avoided the political gyrations of some of its more volatile European partners. It may signal a new era of political instability for Germany, as populist parties on the far right and far left gain more popularity on a fracturing political landscape.
Speculation about a collapse of the coalition had grown since last week after Lindner wrote a position paper, leaked to the news media, that challenged the progressive fiscal policies of his two left-of-centre coalition partners.
Many of his proposals, like the end to national climate policies or cuts to social services, appeared designed to antagonise them. Experts saw the paper as Lindner's attempt to get himself pushed out of the coalition without having to leave it himself. The opposition, which has been calling for an end to the coalition, called it the "divorce document."
Scholz and Robert Habeck, Germany's economy minister and member of the Greens party, had initially tried to hold the coalition together. Calling for "pragmatism" in a post on social media Monday, Scholz continued: "Coalition governments can sometimes be challenging. But the government is elected, and there are issues that need to be resolved."
At the heart of the dispute was a roughly 10 billion-euro, or US$10.7 billion, hole in the 2025 budget.
On Monday, Habeck sought to keep Lindner in the government by offering him several billion euros earmarked as a subsidy for a planned Intel factory to help balance the budget. "This is the worst time for the government to fail," he told reporters then.
On Wednesday, Habeck called the firing "as logical as it is unnecessary," saying that many offers were on the table to meet Lindner's economic demands.
Also Wednesday, Scholz announced that his Social Democrats would govern with the Green Party as a minority government until at least the end of the year. They will need to secure parliamentary majorities on a case-by-case to pass any laws.
On some issues — notably aid to Ukraine, rebuilding the military and cracking down on immigration — they might be able to count on the support of the opposition Christian Democrats, who have similar views on them.
"Germany is Europe's biggest economy and the biggest contributor to the EU budget; they need to have certainty," said Sudha David-Wilp, the Berlin-based regional director of the German Marshall Fund, a think tank. "And a minority government means instability for the country and its partners in Europe," she added.
Ultimately such an arrangement can only work with the tacit support of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, the biggest opposition party that is leading opinion polls to win the next election.
"We cannot afford this unstable government a single day longer," Carsten Linnemann, the party’s secretary-general, told the German tabloid Bild earlier this week.
The Scholz coalition had billed itself as a restart from the sleepy Merkel years. The partners successfully managed pressing problems early in its term after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Germany stopped importing Russian gas.
But a ruling by the country's highest court in 2023 forced the government to make drastic cuts in the budget, leading to strife among the partners over the limit on borrowing that is anchored into the constitution.
The final break comes against the backdrop of a stagnant German economy, which is expected to contract by 0.2% in 2024, the second year in a row that Germany has stagnated. The country is the weakest member of the Group of 7 (G7) and among nations using the euro currency.
In a sign of deepening woes, Volkswagen, Germany's largest industrial employer, is threatening major job cuts and factory closures as it struggles to return its flagship brand to profitability.
With Lindner's insistence on economic reforms and his exit from the government, he appears to have picked the timing of his election campaign.
His Free Democratic Party has been struggling to break 5% support in the polls, the threshold for entering parliament. Leaving the government on a principled stance could allow Lindner to pick up voter support for the next election whenever it is held.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
