Coalition collapse last month leaves Scholz heading minority government
\n BERLIN
\nGermany\u2019s embattled Chancellor Olaf Scholz will face parliament Monday to trigger the process towards February 23 elections, in the hope that he can weather a political crisis and win a second term.
\nScholz, 66, whose coalition collapsed last month, has called a confidence vote which he is expected to lose, clearing the way for the dissolution of the Bundestag and a return to the ballot box.
\nFriedrich Merz, 69, the top candidate of the conservative CDU-CSU opposition alliance of ex-chancellor Angela Merkel, is well ahead in opinion polls.
\nThe political contest comes at a time when Europe\u2019s top economy is struggling to revive its stuttering export-led industrial sector amid high energy prices and tough competition from China.
\nBerlin also faces major geopolitical challenges as it confronts Russia over the Ukraine war and as Donald Trump\u2019s looming return to the White House heightens uncertainty over Nato and trade ties.
\nMerz, a former corporate lawyer, long rained withering fire on the motley alliance of the chancellor\u2019s Social Democrats (SPD), the left-leaning Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
\nCoalition bickering over fiscal and economic woes came to a head when Scholz fired his rebellious FDP finance minister Christian Lindner on November 6, the very day Trump was re-elected.
\nThe departure of Lindner\u2019s FDP left Scholz at the helm of a minority government with the Greens of Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
\nUnable to pass major bills or a new state budget without opposition support, the government is now limping along, with all sides in election mode.
\nGermany\u2019s political turmoil comes as key EU partner France has also been roiled by crisis and gridlock which saw President Emmanuel Macron on Friday asking centrist Francois Bayrou to try to form a new government.
\n\u2018Plagued by doubt\u2019
\nGermany\u2019s lawmakers will meet from 1:00pm (1200GMT) in the lower house, with Scholz speaking first, followed by a debate and then the vote.
\nTo ensure the no-confidence outcome, the Greens have pledged to abstain, after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had threatened to derail the process by voting for Scholz.
\nIf Scholz loses the vote, as expected, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier can move to dissolve the legislature and formally declare the agreed February 23 election date.
\nGerman politics in the post-war era was long staid, stable and dominated by the two big-tent parties, the CDU-CSU and the SPD, with the small FDP often playing kingmaker.
\nThe Greens emerged in the 1980s, but the political landscape has been further fragmented over the past decade by the rise of the AfD, a shock for a country whose dark World War II history had long made far-right parties taboo.
\nFormed as a eurosceptic fringe party, the AfD grew into a major political force when it protested against Merkel\u2019s open-door policy to migrants, and now has around 18 percent voter support.
\nWhile other parties have committed to a \u201cfirewall\u201d of non-cooperation with the AfD, some of them have borrowed from its anti-immigration and anti-Islam rhetoric.
\nAfter the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, some CDU lawmakers were quick to demand that the around one million Syrian refugees in Germany return to their home country.
\nThe winter election is all the more heated as it comes at a time \u201cthe German model is in crisis,\u201d said Berlin-based political scientist Claire Demesmay of Sciences Po Paris.
\nGermany\u2019s prosperity \u201cwas built on cheap energy imported from Russia, on a security policy outsourced to the USA, and on exports and subcontracting to China,\u201d she told AFP.
\nDemesmay said the country was now in a sweeping process of reorientation which is \u201cfeeding fears within society that are reflected on the political level\u201d.
\n\u201cWe can see a political discourse that is more tense than a few years ago. We have a Germany plagued by doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coalition collapse last month leaves Scholz heading minority government BERLIN Germany\u2019s embattled Chancellor Olaf Scholz will face parliament Monday to trigger the process towards February 23 elections, in the hope that he can weather a political crisis and win a second term. Scholz, 66, whose coalition collapsed last month, has called a confidence vote which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-449843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n