faq
As of: November 7th, 2024 9:51 a.m
The end of a coalition can mean many things in Germany. Chancellor Scholz has now announced that he will ask for a vote of confidence. What does that mean exactly and how does the process work? An overview.
Does breaking the government have automatic consequences?
No. The end of the traffic light government alone does not change the fact that Olaf Scholz is Chancellor. There cannot be a new election automatically. This can only be done through a vote of confidence from the Federal Chancellor in accordance with Article 68 of the Basic Law.
Scholz has announced that the Bundestag will vote on his vote of confidence on January 15, 2025. The Federal President then has to decide whether to dissolve the Bundestag and hold new elections.
Until then, Chancellor Scholz will no longer have the long-term support of a majority in the Bundestag. So he is currently chancellor of a minority government. This means: In order to get a majority for individual legislative projects in the Bundestag by the end of December 2024, the Red-Greens would need the support of the current opposition, for example the Union. Scholz has announced that he wants to talk to CDU leader Friedrich Merz about this.
Are there currently any other possible scenarios?
Yes, but they don’t seem realistic. Scholz could also look for a new majority in the current Bundestag that would support him permanently. He could then form a new government coalition without a new election. However, Merz has already publicly ruled out joining a government with the red-green coalition.
Or the Bundestag could express no confidence in Chancellor Scholz via a “constructive vote of no confidence” in accordance with Article 67 of the Basic Law and at the same time elect a new Chancellor with a majority. However, it seems unrealistic that CDU leader Merz, for example, achieves a majority in the current Bundestag.
Why isn’t there an automatic election?
The mothers and fathers of the Basic Law had the goal of ensuring stable government relations. Unlike the Reich President of the Weimar Republic, for example, the Federal President does not have the right to dissolve the Bundestag and order a new election on his own initiative. The Bundestag cannot dissolve itself either.
On the one hand, the question of confidence in the Federal Chancellor can be a means of assuring the trust of the government factions in the Bundestag. However, as is the case now, it can also lead to the initiation of a new election.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder last did this in 2005. It was one of five questions of trust in the history of the Federal Republic.
The opposition demands that Scholz Question of trust not just in January, but immediately. Is there any way to force him to do this earlier?
No, not legally. From a legal point of view, whether a Federal Chancellor asks the vote of confidence, and if so, when he does so, is his decision alone. Even the Federal President cannot order this.
The political pressure to ask the vote of confidence earlier naturally increases enormously with the Union’s demand for an immediate vote of confidence. It will now be exciting to see how Scholz deals with it. And even if the Federal President is not legally allowed to order anything at this stage, he could of course always hold discussions and appeal.
How will the procedure be? Question of trust expire until the possible new election?
Step 1: The Federal Chancellor submits a motion in the Bundestag – according to Scholz in the first week of the new year 2025 – to express confidence in him in accordance with Article 68 of the Basic Law. He can combine this with a substantive question or ask the question of trust in isolation.
Step 2: The Bundestag votes on the vote of confidence no earlier than 48 hours after the application. According to Scholz, this should happen on January 15, 2025.
Step 3: After losing a vote of confidence, the Chancellor can propose to the Federal President to dissolve the Bundestag.
Step 4: The Federal President can then dissolve the Bundestag. He doesn’t have to. He must decide on this question within 21 days of the vote in the Bundestag. If he rejects a dissolution, it would remain a minority government. If the Federal President dissolves the Bundestag, there will be a new election.
Step 5: The election for a new Bundestag must take place within 60 days of the dissolution of the Bundestag (Art. 39 Paragraph 1 Sentence 4 of the Basic Law). An election date would probably be during March 2025. At the request of the Federal President, Chancellor Scholz would remain in office until a new Bundestag has elected a new Chancellor.
What means “minority government”?
The normal case looks like this: The Chancellor is elected by the majority of all members of the Bundestag who have previously formed a coalition. He or she can therefore usually rely on a majority in the Bundestag; for example, when it comes to specific legislative proposals that are to be voted on.
Things are different with a minority government, which Scholz will now lead for the time being. For each individual legislative proposal, the government must seek the support of individual parties or factions so that the necessary majorities are achieved.
This very point will now become relevant until the end of December. On the one hand, it is about whether there can be a majority for the 2025 budget. If the 2025 budget is not passed in time during 2024, there would be a “provisional budget management” regulated in Article 111 of the Basic Law.
Chancellor Scholz has also announced that he will put a few legislative projects that are important to him up for vote in the Bundestag by Christmas. That seems to be the reason why he doesn’t want to ask the vote of confidence until January. He has announced that he will seek discussions with opposition leader Merz about individual legislative projects, for example on economic issues.
What is now exciting is whether the Union will (partly) respond to this and participate or not. Furthermore, a decision by the Bundestag and Bundesrat on the constitutional changes already jointly proposed by the government and the Union on the subject of “More protection for the Federal Constitutional Court” is still pending.
Why was Scholz’s speech also about the debt brake?
In the coalition committee on Wednesday evening, Scholz must have suggested using the exception to the debt brake provided for in the Basic Law to finance defense and social services. A very controversial topic for a long time.
According to Article 115 paragraph of the Basic Law, the state may deviate from the rules of the debt brake in “extraordinary emergency situations”. So to put it simply, take out more loans than the debt brake rules allow. Scholz said that the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine and its consequences was an “extraordinary emergency situation”.
It is not possible to quickly and conclusively assess whether this would be a viable legal justification. In November 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in its ruling on the “Climate and Transformation Fund” that the government had wrongly invoked the exception there.
At that time, however, it was about the corona pandemic and its consequences as an “extraordinary emergency situation”, i.e. a different reason than Scholz has now given. It would therefore be crucial to have a comprehensive and legally secure justification for the exemption from the debt brake. And of course you would need a majority in the Bundestag for this.
