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Fried – view from Berlin
The majority of Germans want new elections – but the solution would be so simple
A life with early elections is possible, but not sensible, I think star-Columnist Nico Fried
© Illustration: Sebastian König/Stern; Photo: Henning Kretschmer/Stern
New elections are called for sooner than they are held. starColumnist Nico Fried suggests a simpler solution.
A few days ago “Bild” reported: 57 percent of Germans want early elections. You too? Then I have bad news: the road is long. And the problems that you actually hope to solve are left behind for the time being.
New elections are quickly called for in Germany, but are difficult to achieve. There is only one bottleneck that leads to elections before the end of the regular legislative period. The Chancellor must ask the MPs a vote of confidence – with the intention of losing the vote. This fact alone marks a strange paradox: the very politician who has the most at stake is the only one who can take the first step towards new elections.
Why should Olaf Scholz do that? In 2005, Gerhard Schröder claimed that after years of debate about Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV, he could no longer rely on the long-term support of his coalition. At that time, Schröder and all SPD and Green MPs were only three votes above the Chancellor’s majority. In every important vote, only four of 304 red-green MPs, together with the opposition, could have gotten him into trouble.
But today it looks different: The traffic light has 417 votes, the Union, AfD, Left and non-attached parties together have 319. The coalition is therefore 48 votes above the Chancellor’s majority of 369. Scholz can afford a stable full of dissatisfied Liberals or humiliated Greens. Mathematically, even half of the FDP parliamentary group could want to overthrow him – he would still have a majority.
If reason prevails, there will be no new elections
But of course it could be, now purely theoretically, that the Greens refuse to take action on migration policy or that the FDP all succumb to an old party slogan: It is better not to govern than to govern incorrectly. (Incidentally, the fact that party leader Christian Lindner has already run away with this sentence once is an important reason why he will not do it again. But please, we are only engaging in a thought experiment here, because you, dear readers , absolutely want new elections.) So if the Greens or FDP hit the jackpot, Olaf Scholz will lose trust. Finally new elections!
Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that.
The Chancellor without trust asks the Federal President to dissolve the Bundestag. But he doesn’t have to follow him. He has 21 days to hold talks about whether the existing Bundestag wants to elect a chancellor with a new majority. For example, Olaf Scholz as head of a grand coalition. Do you think that is unthinkable? Not me.
After the failure of the Jamaica talks in 2017, Frank-Walter Steinmeier once persuaded a party to abandon its cemented rejection of a grand coalition. Why shouldn’t what Steinmeier achieved with the SPD also succeed with the Union? Or does Friedrich Merz want to take responsibility for Germany staggering through a months-long election campaign and coalition negotiations without a stable government, while two wars rage around it? If reason prevails, there will be no new elections.
Yes, it’s complicated. But there is a simple solution: the existing coalition pulls itself together and does its job. Because a life with early elections is possible, but not sensible.