The Bundestag has withdrawn confidence from Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). In a special sitting of the parliament, 207 members of the SPD politician gave their confidence to Scholz in a secret ballot on Monday. 394 parliamentarians voted against Scholz, and 116 abstained. The chancellor’s majority would have required 367 votes.
Scholz had already announced that, in the expected defeat, he would propose the dissolution of the Bundestag to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The head of state has 21 days to make a decision, after which new elections must take place within 60 days. The parties had already agreed on February 23, 2025, as the election date.
In the history of the Federal Republic, the confidence question has been put five times, each time by Willy Brandt (1972), Helmut Schmidt (1982), and Helmut Kohl (1982), and twice by Gerhard Schröder (2001 and 2005). In three cases – for Brandt, Kohl, and once for Schröder – it was a “false confidence question” where the loss was intentionally brought about. The difference with Scholz is that he no longer had a majority behind him in the parliament after the collapse of the coalition.