German leaders settle on Feb. 23 snap election

BERLIN — The leaders of Germany’s major parties have agreed to hold a federal election on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025, following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s troubled three-party coalition last week.
Scholz is now expected to hold a vote of confidence on Dec. 16 paving the way for the February election. For days, there has been speculation and debate on the timing of the vote.
“Now we can finally move away from this tiresome discussion about the election date and concentrate on what is really good for our country,” said Rolf Mützenich, the leader of the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) parliamentary faction on Tuesday. “I believe this will help us to finally focus on the clear question: Who is the better chancellor for Germany?”
Both Mützenich and Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), were set to meet with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday evening to propose the election date. Ultimately, the decision on when to hold the election rests with Steinmeier.
Scholz fired his finance minister, Christian Lindner, the leader of the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP), last week after several months of rising acrimony due to sharp disagreements on spending and stimulus for Germany’s ailing economy.
At the time, Scholz said he would hold a confidence vote on Jan. 15 — which would have set up a new election by the end of March — while ruling as the head of a minority government consisting of his SPD and the Greens in the interim. But leaders of other parties, including the CDU’s Merz, urged Scholz to speed up that timeline, arguing Germany couldn’t afford a prolonged period of political uncertainty.
“The situation in Berlin is not quite so simple and, above all, not quite so responsible,” said Merz on Tuesday. “Nevertheless, we have endeavored to find a solution to the problem in the last few hours, now that the chancellor has not had a majority in the German Bundestag for almost a week.”
Now that the election date appears to be settled, the political campaigning is set to begin in earnest.
The CDU and their conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), are currently leading in polls by a wide margin, with 32 percent support, and appear likely to lead the next coalition government with Merz as chancellor. Scholz’s SPD, on the other hand, is polling third with 16 percent, just behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Following the election, the formation of a new coalition government could take weeks or months. The CDU has vowed not to form a federal coalition with the AfD, making a coalition with the SPD one likely outcome.
Based on current polling and due to growing political fragmentation caused by rising upstart parties on the extremes of the political spectrum, the next government may also be a three-party coalition involving the Greens or the FDP, though the FDP is now only polling at 4 percent — below the threshold needed to make it into parliament.
The political vacuum in Germany could hardly come at a worse time. The election of Donald Trump in the U.S. has triggered great uncertainly in Europe, particularly regarding matters of defense and trade.
As Moscow wages war in Ukraine, Europe is largely dependent on United States military might for its security. But Trump has threatened to cut U.S. aid to Ukraine, and has cast doubt on his willingness to defend NATO allies, once encouraging Russian leaders to “do whatever the hell they want” to member countries that don’t meet the alliance’s defense spending targets.
Trump has also promised steep tariffs that could hit German industry particularly hard amid an economic contraction. The Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research estimates that future tariffs could cost Germany €33 billion, and that exports to the U.S. could drop by 15 percent.
Carlo Martuscelli contributed reporting.