Europe’s largest economy is plunged into political uncertainty: Last week German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party, breaking up the governing coalition – which united the SPD, liberals and greens – in a dispute on the money to be allocated for military support to Ukraine.
Today the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Christian Democrats of the CDU/CSU agreed on February 23 on the date to bring Germany to elections, a date to be confirmed after the formal opening of the government crisis following the collapse of the “traffic light” coalition : The German Chancellor is expected to ask the Bundestag for a vote of confidence on December 16. The decision will be up to federal president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, but he is unlikely to oppose the proposal.
The elections in Germany
In crisis in the polls due to the country’s economic difficulties, Scholz had expressed himself in favor of new elections for the end of March, but public opinion was opposed to such a long wait, pushing the chancellor to compromise. According to federal official Ruth Brand, the dates hypothesized in February “are very feasible from a legal point of view”, while she had considered it “difficult” to open the polls on January 19, as CDU leader Friedrich Merz had requested.
Scholz leads the German locomotive towards instability: a problem for everyone
Meanwhile, the climate of the electoral campaign has already heated up with the main candidate for the chancellorship of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, who has addressed an “ultimatum to Moscow”, to be implemented in the event that his party were to win the elections.
Merz’s threat against Russia
While Scholz tries to understand how to pick up the pieces of a government experience that ended before its time and was full of conflicts between coalition allies, Friedrich Merz tries to immediately make his position on some current issues clear. The candidate for German chancellor for the CDU spoke out harshly regarding the war between Russia and Ukraine: “I will give Putin 24 hours to stop, then I will send the Taurus to Ukraine with permission to use them against Russian cities.” The message was immediately commented by the vice-president of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev.
The possible supply of German Taurus missiles to Kiev will not change the course of hostilities in Ukraine, but will increase the risk that the conflict will reach “its most dangerous phase”, Medvedev wrote on Telegram. “It is clear that these ‘ultimatums’ are electoral in nature. It is clear that these missiles are not capable of changing anything significant in the course of military operations,” the former Russian president added. “Their surrender is just a way to prolong the agony of the Bandera regime,” he commented, referring to the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera. “But cruise missile attacks increase the risk that the conflict will reach its most dangerous phase”, commented Medvedev. Until now, Chancellor Scholz had refused to supply these missiles to Kiev.
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