The leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, urged German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday to submit to a vote of confidence next week at the latest, and not on January 15, as he announced yesterday, after the breakup of the coalition government.

In an appearance before the press, Merz said that “there is no reason to wait until January next year to ask for a vote of confidence,” and stressed that the government coalition, formed by social democrats, greens and liberals, “no longer has a majority” in the lower house.

“Therefore, we have to demand that the chancellor, by unanimous decision of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group – the Bavarian Christian Social Union – immediately convene a vote of confidence, no later than the beginning of next week,” he said.

Call for elections

The conservative politician said that he will ask Scholz at the meeting they will hold this noon “to clear the way” for elections and present his arguments in a subsequent meeting with the country’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Merz alluded to a whole series of international commitments, conferences and decisions in the European Union that “now require a German government to be able to act.”

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“We simply cannot afford now to have a government without a majority in Germany for several months and then carry out an electoral campaign for several more months and then possibly several weeks of coalition negotiations. This now has to go fast,” he added.

He said that if Scholz submits to the vote of confidence now, it would be possible to hold general elections in the second half of January and assured that there is enough time for the parties to carry out all the necessary preparations.

“There is no reason at all to wait until the spring of next year,” he insisted.

Scholz’s chief advisor will take over the Finance portfolio

Jörg Kukies, an important advisor to the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and currently Secretary of State in the Chancellery, will assume the portfolio of Minister of Finance of the Government of a minority of Social Democrats and Greens, after the collapse of the coalition with the expulsion of the Liberals.

Kukies, 56, will replace the president of the Liberal Party (FDP), Christian Lindner, who was dismissed yesterday by Scholz with the argument of the loss of confidence and the unwillingness to find compromises to save the coalition.

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Economist by training, he worked for a long time for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and before moving to the Foreign Ministry he was Secretary of State in the Ministry of Finance between 2018 and 2021.

The president demands that politicians be up to it

For his part, the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, urged on Thursday all political leaders to assume their responsibility in the face of the enormous challenge now of having a minority government and, almost certainly, early general elections in March after the breakup of the coalition.

“This is not the time for tactics and skirmishes. It’s time for common sense and responsibility. I expect all those responsible to rise to the magnitude of the challenges,” said the head of state in a brief appearance before the media.

Steinmeier recalled that in the 75-year history of the Federal Republic of Germany, it has rarely happened that a government coalition has ceased to have a majority in the Lower House or Bundestag before the end of the legislature.

The president of Germany said that, although the collapse of the Government “is not the end of the world” and the German Constitution includes provisions for these cases, “it is a political crisis that we have to leave behind and that we will leave behind.”

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Before the collapse of the coalition, the general elections were scheduled for September 28, while now, given the high possibility that Scholz will lose the vote because he is in the minority, they will probably be held in advance in March.

The German President must decide on the dissolution of the Lower House if the Lower House withdraws its confidence in the Chancellor, in accordance with Article 68 of the Basic Law.

“I am willing to make this decision,” said Steinmeier, who insisted that Germany “needs stable majorities and a government capable of acting,” so “that will be my yardstick.”