How to Understand the Collapse of Germany’s Government, and What’s Next

Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the German Parliament, ending the unpopular three-party coalition government he has led since 2021.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany called a confidence vote in the German Parliament on Monday. He lost by a tally of 394-207, with 116 abstaining. That effectively ends the unpopular government he has led since 2021.

The vote means Germany will hold new federal elections in early 2025, most likely on Feb. 23. That’s about seven months earlier than originally planned.

Why did Mr. Scholz’s government fall?

In the 2021 elections, Mr. Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats won the most seats, but far short of a majority. He formed a three-party coalition government — Germany’s first in many decades — with two smaller parties, the Greens and the Free Democrats.

That alliance was a significant reason for the government’s instability. The Free Democrats’ conservative economic positions sometimes put them at odds with their coalition partners.

The government was relatively popular at first, but its fortunes began to turn when Germany’s constitutional court ruled that it could not use about 60 billion euros earmarked for the coronavirus pandemic for other purposes.

Fights within the coalition and frequent leaks to the press led to the government quickly losing voter support. After a series of state elections this summer in which all three governing parties suffered, an early end began to seem inevitable. The final break came in November, when Mr. Scholz fired his finance minister, Christian Lindner, the leader of the Free Democrats.

What happens next?

After the confidence vote on Monday, Mr. Scholz asked President Frank Walter Steinmeier to formally dissolve the Parliament. Mr. Steinmeier, whose role is largely ceremonial, has 21 days to do that and set a date for early elections. He is expected to hold cursory talks with the different groups in Parliament before sending the lawmakers home, making Mr. Scholz’s government a caretaker government.

This is an orchestrated process, and all of Germany’s major parties have agreed on the formal steps and the date for the election. The parties have used the time since November to begin preparing for the new elections.

Why does this matter?

The governments of Germany and France, the most influential countries in the European Union, have now both failed in the same month.

That deepens a crisis of leadership in Europe at a time of mounting economic and security challenges. The war in Ukraine has reached a pivotal moment. President-elect Donald J. Trump, openly disdainful of the trans-Atlantic alliance, is set to take office in the United States. And now Germany, Europe’s largest economy, will be in the hands of a caretaker government unable to make major policy decisions.

Is this unusual?

Yes. Germany has been known for durable coalitions built on plodding consensus. This will be only the second so-called snap election since West and East Germany reunified more than three decades ago.

The country had 20 governments in 14 years after the end of World War I — instability that helped clear the way for the Nazis to take complete control of the government. That is why the Constitution Germany adopted after World War II makes dissolving the government difficult.

But times are changing once again. Mainstream parties are getting less of the overall vote and more voters are turning to the far-right and far-left fringes. The unstable three-party coalition under Mr. Scholz may be sign of things to come.

Why did Mr. Scholz call a vote he was sure to lose?

He had little choice.

After the split with the Free Democrats, Mr. Scholz no longer headed a parliamentary majority, and the political pressure on him to call the vote became overwhelming. If he had waited longer, his party would probably have suffered even more in the upcoming election.

Who are the contenders?

Seven parties will go into the campaign for Parliament with a realistic chance of gaining seats. Polls show that some on the political fringes — especially on the right — are poised for strong showings.

Besides Mr. Scholz, three other mainstream parties are also led by well-known politicians, two of whom held important posts in the government: Mr. Lindner, leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, whose falling out with the chancellor helped precipitate the collapse of the coalition; and Robert Habeck, the economic minister and lead candidate for the left-leaning Greens.

The fourth mainstream candidate, Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, is favored to win the most votes, and with it the chancellorship.

The campaign is likely to be dominated by several issues that have roiled much of Europe: how best to revive struggling economies, bridge growing social divides, ease voter anxieties over immigration and buttress national defense.

All of the mainstream parties have said they would refuse to partner with the far-right Alternative for Germany, parts of which are being monitored as a threat by Germany’s security services. Nonetheless, the party — which is known as the AfD and is polling at about 18 percent — appears to be gaining ground.

Additional reporting by Jim Tankersley