German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has sacked Finance Minister Christian Lindner, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit confirmed on Wednesday evening. Lindner, the head of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), has been at odds with other coalition members over economic policy.
The three coalition partners – Scholz’s Social Democrats, Lindner’s FDP, and the Greens represented by Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock – were to hold a series of meetings this week in order to resolve their differences.
During the talks, Lindner claimed that there was not sufficient common ground between the coalition partners about economic and financial policy, the German media reported, citing those who participated in the meetings. The minister then proposed early elections at the start of 2025 to help the government “regain stability” and the ability to “act quickly,” the reports said.
According to media reports, the leaders of the three coalition parties spent two and a half hours discussing ways to plug the multibillion-euro hole in next year’s budget and give a kick-start to the misfiring economy.
According to the German broadcaster ARD, Scholz plans to call for a vote of confidence in his government in the Bundestag. That could happen in mid-January, the report said, adding that this could potentially “open the way” for early elections in March.
However, the chancellor rejected Lindner’s proposal to call early elections outright, Die Zeit reported.
The government has still not presented its final budget draft for 2025. The existing one has a deficit of “several billion euros,” the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported earlier this week. The legislature’s Budget Committee is scheduled to review the final draft on November 14. The budget must also be passed by the parliament by the end of this month.
Now, according to Die Zeit, it is “absolutely unclear” if there will be a federal budget for 2025 at all and how the government plans to proceed. Earlier, DW reported that Scholz could end up with a minority government consisting of only his Social Democratic Party and the Greens. That would require him to seek situational coalitions in the parliament every time his government needed a majority of lawmakers to back an initiative.