Capital Economy, Business and Finance
Last night, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired finance minister Christian Lindner and announced a confidence vote in the government on January 15, which could trigger snap elections by the end of March.
The leaders of the long-unhappy three-party coalition – Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and Lindner’s FDP – have spent weeks disagreeing over how to plug a €9 billion shortfall in the 2025 federal budget and the measures needed to manage Germany’s economic downturn.
They also held rival meetings with industry groups, published conflicting policy papers and had different views on how to tackle high energy costs and infrastructure problems.
The government of Europe’s largest economy collapsed just as the EU is scrambling to form a united response to Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
