Scholz Loses No-Confidence Vote, Germany Faces Early Elections

On 16 December, the Bundestag passed a vote of no confidence in the government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Deutsche Welle reports.

According to the vote count, 394 lawmakers supported the vote of no confidence in the current government, while 207 members of parliament expressed support for Scholz's government, and 116 abstained.

Scholz will now have to ask President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to dissolve the parliament. Formally, Steinmeier has 21 days to make a decision, but he has already agreed on a date for early elections - 23 February 2025.

Before the vote, Scholz made a speech in which he called on German lawmakers to continue supporting Ukraine.

‘Germany is the biggest supporter of Ukraine among European countries. I want it to remain so,’ Scholz said.

At the same time, he stressed that his government was not going to take any actions that could harm Germany itself.

‘So we will not supply cruise missiles - long-range weapons that can hit targets far inland from Russia. And we will definitely not send our soldiers to this war. At least not during my chancellorship,’ Scholz assured.

Nevertheless, Scholz said that the issue now is to protect Ukraine's sovereignty. 

Scholz also called on lawmakers to understand the fact that Germany needs ‘massive’ investments, especially in armaments. ‘We have to invest massively in our security and defence,’ Scholz said, given Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine and Russia's geographical proximity to Germany.

The chancellor himself initiated the issue of trust in his government.

The coalition in Germany collapsed in November after the Free Democratic Party left it.

Earlier, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he had not changed his position on the transfer of German Taurus missiles to Ukraine and the lifting of the ban on long-range strikes against Russia. At the G20 summit in Brazil, the politician said that the deployment of these weapons would force the German side to take responsibility for targeting the missiles, and he would not support this. He added that Berlin had made an exception and allowed the use of German weapons to defend Kharkiv, but that this decision did not change his basic principles.