WHAT IS HAPPENING IN GERMANY??

Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to the German traffic light coalition falls apart as Olaf Sholz fires finance minister Christian Lindner

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[stennostenno]

So Lindner, the fired guy, was also the leader of one of the coalition parties (the Liberals). Him becoming minister of finance in the first place was part of the coalition contract. By firing him, i assume this would also void the coalition contract

[xcoder]

Normally firing a minister would not trigger an early election, but in this case he fired a minister from another party (Lindner) who was actually the leader of that party. So Lindner said, "If you fire me, our party will leave the coalition, " and by leaving the coalition, the chancellor is no longer supported by a majority of the parliament.

If a chancellor is no longer supported by a majority, there are 3 options:

1) The chancellor simply continues, but he will have a hard time getting any laws through the parliament, since the majority does not support him and may not vote for those laws.

2) Parliament elects a new chancellor who immediately replaces the current one.

3) The chancellor asks the parliament if they still trust him, and if the majority denies trust, the president has to decide what happens next.

In the last case there are again 3 options:

A) The president can dissolve the parliament, which immediately triggers new elections.

B) The president can refuse to dissolve the parliament and ask them to vote for a new chancellor. If they can agree on one, this is the same as option (2) above.

C) If the parliament fails to elect a new chancellor after three attempts, the president can simply choose any candidate to become the new chancellor. But since this chancellor does not have the majority of the parliament behind him, we are back to step 1 and the whole process could be repeated and this time the president would dissolve the parliament and start new elections.

The planned procedure is as follows:

Scholz continues with option (1) until January. In January, he chooses option (3), and if he doesn't get the trust, the president is expected to choose option (A). If he gets the trust, he can simply continue until the next regular election.

If the parliament isn't happy with this plan, they always have option (2), but that would require that more than 50% of the parliament can agree on a candidate to replace Scholz, which is very unlikely. A chancellor cannot be voted out of office in Germany unless he asks a question of trust. He can only be replaced by a new one. But there is no obligation to ever ask that question.

[JonasReichert]

It wasn’t stable at any time. It’s incredible how long it lasted… the FDP never wanted to be in this coalition.

[MarcoKrieger]

The thing is, even without a government, Germany doesn't fall into chaos.
In most cases we don't notice that we have one in the first place.

[faketheo]

Weird to see an American as invested in understanding German politics, as most Germans are in understanding American politics.

[insu_na]

We now have a pedestrian traffic light coalition 🤷
Volker Wissing is not joining the SPD and the reason why it broke the coalition is because Christian Linder is the head of the FDP and was not "just" the minister of finance.

[MartinHeilmann]

Best quote: "Maybe google knows I am interested in Germany..." 🤣🤣🤣

[xXYannuschXx]

I find it worrying how the US media is portraying this as "The German government is collapsing", as if we are plunged into anarchy all of the sudden.

[ChrisGrump]

This is fine. We just vote a little earlier than we would have.

[tofuben]

It's not that dramatic, not the first time something like that happened.

[nora]

The thing with the confidence vote: Scholz can ask the parliament with a vote if they still trust him or not. If he doesnt get the majority vote. Steinmeier has the possibility to dissolve the parliament. If that happens there has to be a new election within the next 60 days.

Steinmeier is a memeber of the SPD but as he is the president of germany he has to stay neutral and not favor any party. But also one of his dutys as president is to formally appoint and dismiss the chancellor and the ministers (the chancellor gets voted on by the parliament and the ministers will be asked to be ministers by the chancellor (the president does not pick and choose who gets a government office, because he has solely a representative position))

[chhero]

The problem with the coalition has been that it had to mediate between the center left leaning policies of the SPD, the left leaning and ecological policies of the Greens and the neoliberal and libertarian policies of the FDP, while it was simultaneously burdened with taking care of inflation and the economic downturn following the corona pandemic, the war in Ukraine and subsequent unraveling of germany's economic dependency on Russia and escalating tensions in the Middle East. In addition to that several longstanding political issues, like a backlog in infrastructure overhauls and problems in the acquisition of qualified personal in several important fields, failures to reform germany's bureaucracy etc. had escalated to a point that had caused a lot of discontent in the country. And the coalition was marred by several public arguments between the coalition parties.

The essential problem that finally split the coalition is that they were in fundamental disagreement about the interpretation of the "Schuldenbremse", a debt limiting mechanism that had been written into the german constitution following the 2008 economic crisis, and its exceptions for emergency financing.
The SPD and the Greens held the position that the economic downturn and the war in Ukraine essentially amounted to such an emergency that it warranted suspension of the debt limiting mechanism, which is technically allowed if the government can reach an agreement on it. While the FDP held the position that the Schuldenbremse should be upheld no matter what.
Christian Lindner, who's the finance minister but simultaneously the head of the FDP also repeatedly had blocked legislation of other ministries that had been previously agreed to, while excusing it with budget concerns that were in part caused by the FDP's unwillingness to even have talks about the Schuldenbremse. Also last years budget plan was essentially toppled by Germany's supreme court because Christian Lindner had made some controversial calls in the budget plan that the opposition had criticed and subsequently brought to court.
Given this entire situation the negotiations for next years budget had pretty much come to a stand still, with again very public arguments of all parties accusing each other of being unconstructive. And with the potential defunding of Ukraine on the horizon after the recent US election and the economic problems reaching a point that needed immediate decisions Olaf Scholz decided after weeks of negotiations that there was no longer a good basis for cooperation with the FDP and asked the president to release Lindner as finance minister. Which caused the breakup of the coalition seeing that Lindner is the head of the FDP.

[UlliStein]

Italy has this problem every few years and they all survived. So cool down, drink a good beer and go vote. Greetings from Munich, Germany.
Problem is: The traffic light coalition is made of too different parties, and in the last three years they wanted too many projects to do them all. So some of them are not finished yet which caused some critics. But many of them succeeded which is a good thing. Sad to see the traffic light collaps.

[haraberu]

Steinmeier is the President of Germany, equivalent to the King in other modern European countries. He signs the laws, he could veto them but he doesn't. He appoints ministers, but he always appoints whoever the Chancellor suggests. It would be extremely unusual for the President to go against the Chancellor, just like you won't see the King of Sweden go against the decisions of the elected government.
The last German president who had any real decision making power held that office from 1934 to 1945, and I don't have to tell you how that went.

[einmensch]

8:33 No, While a person is Federal President, his party office rests. But the President have to appoint and fire the ministers on request from the Chancellor. Steinmeier only does the formal act

[Justforvisit]

6:45 Volker Wissing isn't FDP anymore, he left the party so he could stay minister for traffic and digital infrastructure.

And no, no german really understands why these two posts are combined like that.

[goodgame]

Besides being minister of finance and leader of the FDP he ws vice chancellor as well. (The Ampel had two vice chancellors one from the Greens one from the FDP)

[MichaEl-rhkv]

The government has not collapsed, but by firing Lindner, leader of the FDP and minister of finance, it lost its majority in the parliament (the Bundestag). Legally the chancellor remains in office until the Bundestag elects another chancellor - and the candidate of the opposition would currently still not get enough votes in the parliament, even including the members of the FDP, to overthrow the government. Therefore the leader of the opposition demands a vote of confidence now - but only the chancellor himself can ask for it. If he loses this vote, he is enabled to ask the president for dissolving the parliament and scheduling new elections (but he is not forced by law to ask for it, and the president can decide not to dissolve the parliament anyway). Chancellor Scholz has announced to ask for a vote of confidence at January 15th which could then led to elections in March, and the opposition does fear he could turn over his currently very bad poll values until then, if he is no longer restrained by the FDP.
Fun fact: Minister of traffic Wissing has left the FPD to be able to remain in office.

[inakingston]

Was a crazy day Wednesday, for the US and Germany. Difficult times are coming, so look where you put down you feet, guys. Think of the future and what we need to keep peace and safety for all of us.

[Justforvisit]

In short: We are living in interesting times...