Traffic light crisis: Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to fire Finance Minister Christian Lindner

With Olaf Scholz’s move, the traffic light coalition is on the brink of final collapse. At the beginning of the year, Scholz wants to star-Information raises the question of trust in the German Bundestag. If he loses this, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier would have to decide whether there will be new elections.

Earlier in the evening, Lindner Scholz had proposed a new election for the Bundestag during the coalition committee meeting late on Wednesday evening. Participants quoted Lindner as saying that the talks showed that there was no sufficient common ground in economic and financial policy. It is in the country’s interest to quickly regain stability and the ability to act.

We provide current information about the events in our live blog:

Scholz then announced his dismissal to his finance minister. Federal President Steinmeier is formally responsible for this. Scholz will suggest that he be fired. The traffic light parties therefore want to meet for separate meetings late on Wednesday evening – to sort themselves out, discuss the situation and discuss the next steps.

After star-In the Chancellor’s Party, the Executive Group Executive Board and the Party Presidium will initially meet at 9:30 p.m., and the SPD parliamentary group wants to meet for a special meeting at 10:30 p.m. – in person. The Green and FDP parliamentary groups also want to hold a special meeting half an hour earlier, i.e. at 10 p.m.

According to the information, Lindner suggested that the traffic light parties, as in 2005, should jointly aim for new elections at the beginning of 2025 as quickly as possible in order to enable a new government for Germany to be formed in an “orderly and dignified manner”. The FDP would be willing to jointly decide on the supplementary budget for 2024 and be part of a caretaker federal government.

The leaders of the SPD, Greens and FDP had previously discussed for two and a half hours to find ways out of the traffic light crisis. Essentially, it was about how the billion dollar hole in the 2025 budget can be plugged and the badly hit German economy can be brought back on track.

Lindner announced the “autumn of decisions” for the coalition some time ago. By this he was primarily referring to the budget for next year, which was to be passed in the Bundestag on November 29th. He was also concerned with a strategy for how Germany should be led out of the economic crisis.

He made suggestions that escalated the dispute in the coalition. In his concept for an economic turnaround, Lindner calls, among other things, for the final abolition of the solidarity surcharge, even for high earners, and a change of course in climate policy.

There was considerable resistance to such ideas from the SPD and the Greens. Habeck had also taken a step towards Lindner. On Monday he agreed to use the billions in funding released after the postponement of the construction of an Intel factory in Magdeburg to plug budget holes.

Note: More information coming soon at stern.de.