New election of the Bundestag
Steinmeier announces new election decision
Updated on December 27, 2024Reading time: 4 min.
The parties are already preparing at full speed for February 23rd as the date of the federal election. But the Federal President has the last word. And first comes another step.
Today, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announces his decision to dissolve the Bundestag and hold new elections. It is certain that he will follow Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s (SPD) request to dissolve parliament. It is also almost certain that Steinmeier will announce February 23rd as the election date. The leaders of the SPD and Union factions had agreed on this day.
Scholz asked the Bundestag for a vote of confidence on December 16th after the traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP broke up in November after only around three years. Scholz did not receive a majority for his motion – as he intended. He then asked Steinmeier to dissolve the Bundestag in order to clear the way for new elections.
According to Article 68 of the Basic Law, the Federal President can, at the suggestion of the Federal Chancellor, dissolve the Bundestag within 21 days if the latter loses the vote of confidence. Article 39 stipulates that the new election must then take place within 60 days.
Steinmeier only gives himself 11 days to make his decision and not the 21 days available to him. However, after the Bundestag’s decision on the vote of confidence, he first held discussions with the chairmen of the parliamentary groups and groups. So he wanted to find out whether there was still a way to achieve a stable political majority in the Bundestag. However, this is not in sight.
Immediately after the traffic light broke, Steinmeier announced the criteria he would use to make his decision: “Our country needs stable majorities and a government capable of acting. That will be my criteria for review.”
The fact that the Bundestag is dissolved prematurely is an absolutely exceptional case in the history of the Federal Republic. Scholz’s vote of confidence was only the sixth since 1949. In three cases, the electoral period ended prematurely. This affected Chancellors Willy Brandt (SPD) in 1972, Helmut Kohl (CDU) in 1982 and Gerhard Schröder (SPD) in 2005.
Schröder had already asked for a vote of confidence in 2001, but not in order to lose it. Rather, he wanted to get his partly recalcitrant red-green coalition behind him for the Bundeswehr’s participation in the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan.
Helmut Schmidt’s (SPD) vote of confidence in 1982 was similarly disciplinary, as he wanted to force the SPD/FDP coalition’s approval of his security and labor market policy. Both SPD chancellors won the vote of confidence and the Bundestag was not dissolved.
The parties are already preparing intensively for the new elections. There will hardly be any free weekends for the election campaigners until election day. For example, the SPD and the AfD want to do so on the weekend of 11/12. January will finally determine their candidates for chancellor and adopt the election programs. The Greens will hold their party conference on January 26th, the CDU on February 3rd, the CSU on February 8th and the FDP on February 9th.
This evening on February 9th there will also be the first television duel between SPD Chancellor Scholz and his CDU challenger Friedrich Merz on ARD and ZDF. A week later, RTL invited the two opponents to the television studio. What is expected to be the last session of the Bundestag before the election is also likely to be an election campaign battle – they will meet on February 11th for the general debate.
So far there is no indication that MPs will go to the Federal Constitutional Court against the dissolution of the Bundestag. After the dissolution of parliament in 1982 and 2005, individual politicians did this because they felt their parliamentary rights had been violated. However, they were unsuccessful. Kohl and Schröder each had a majority in the Bundestag and only wanted to force new elections with their fictitious and therefore highly controversial vote of confidence.
Scholz wanted that too – but he lost the majority with the traffic light crash. The Karlsruhe judgment of 1983 could also have been written for today’s situation.