Germany Elections:The chancellor makes a strong case for opposition support “for the good of the country, according to the guardian.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has called on opposition parties to support key legislation after last week losing his majority in parliament, urging them to prevent his country from becoming as polarised as the US.
“There is no democracy without compromises,” Scholz said in a speech to the lower house of parliament on Wednesday. “Let us, for the good of the country, work together until the new election,” he said in an unusually fiery appeal to members of the Bundestag.
A week after his three-party “traffic light” coalition government collapsed just as Europe was digesting the results of the US presidential election, Scholz confirmed that he would ask for a vote of confidence to take place on 16 December. That would pave the way for early parliamentary Germany elections in February.
Germany has been governed since 2021 by a coalition led by Scholz’s left-leaning Social Democrats with the smaller pro-business Free Democrats and the Greens. It was an uneasy and fractious alliance, and it collapsed last week when Scholz fired the finance minister, Christian Lindner, of the Free Democrats, in a late-night move after disagreements over how to revive the shrinking economy.
“The date at the end of February has now been set and I am very grateful for that,” the chancellor said on Wednesday.
