Germany’s Government has collapsed over its refusal to budge on Net Zero after Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his Finance Minister on Wednesday evening. The Telegraph has more.
The Chancellor sacked Christian Lindner after days of crisis talks and amid a deluge of rumours that his turbulent coalition was about to come to an end.
In a statement to the press on Wednesday evening, the Chancellor accused his Finance Minister of “breaking his trust” and putting the “short-term survival of his party over the wellbeing of the country”.
Mr. Scholz, 66, said that he would put his Chancellorship to a vote of confidence in January, a move that will clear the way for early elections in March.
Mr. Lindner, head of the pro-business Free Democrats, had been pushing for corporate tax relief and a delay to Net Zero targets as part of a comprehensive package to get the economy moving after years of stagnation.
Mr. Scholz claimed that he made a “generous offer” to Mr. Lindner but that the Finance Minister “showed no interest whatsoever in accepting this offer for the good of the country”.
“Too often, Mr. Lindner has blocked laws in an irrelevant manner, too often he has engaged in petty party-political tactics, too often he has broken my trust,” Mr. Scholz said.
Mr. Lindner hit back in a statement made shortly after in which he accused Mr. Scholz of “not having the strength to give our country a new start”.
He added that the Chancellor had tried to get him to suspend the country’s strict debt brake rules, something he refused to accept.
At the end of last week, Mr. Lindner set out his conditions for staying in the Government in an internal paper that called for an “economic transformation”.
Among the measures were a demand to cut the corporate tax level, freeze all new business regulations and push back the target of achieving Net Zero by five years.
The paper was immediately rejected by Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats and the Greens, the third party in the coalition.
In true European style, the slow-motion collapse involves a confidence vote in January (yes, really), followed by a likely early election in March – rather than the scheduled September. No rush to consult the people, it seems. On the plus side, the Government won’t have a working majority for nearly half a year.
Worth reading in full.
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Heil Heatpumps!
Like Adolph ordering his non-existing troops to push back the Red Army, Scholz is sitting in his bunker ordering the wind turbines to generate more power.
There is an excellent picture in the DT piece of Scholz, hands covering his face. Tears? Despair? I want Mutti!?
Only political nerds care for the exact ways parliamentary majorities are organized. The silent majority of real people just wants government to gets its job done¹.
[Thomas Gschwend, political scientist at Manheim university in an interview with the ZDF]
Thus spake an expert democrat who’s familiar with the workings of the German political system and that’s exactly what’s going to happen: We’ll end up with an informal or possibly even formal so-called grand coalition (SPD/CDU) and everything will continue as before. A long time ago, in the 1960s, this was considered a democratically dubious outcome as it meant that there’s effectively no opposition. But it has long since become the norm for maintaining uniparty government in Germany despite dwindling popular support for that.
¹ Original: Wie Mehrheiten gemacht werden, das ist etwas für politische Nerds. Die breite Bevölkerung will einfach, daß die Arbeit gemacht wird.
Ah yes. The grand coalition – reminds me of 1933 Germany.
You weren’t alive in 1933 and that basically everything which has Germany somehwere triggers a “1933!” reflex in your brain even if this objectively doesn’t make the least bit of sense¹ just demonstrates how effectively you’ve been programmed since early childhood².
¹ Even the so-called German center-right, the CDU under Friedrich Merz, is internationalist, social-democratic, pro-“current thing”, whatever it happens to be, and violently opposed to both the concepts of a German nation and a German nation state.
² That’s the complimentary assumption. Genocidal hostilty to Germans is obviously also a possibility. After all, that’s not exactly unheard of in the so-called angosphere.
Auf Deutsch gesagt¹:
¹Stated in German, German idom for To be brutally honest,
The much more environmentally-friendly pedestrian traffic light¹ is now going to save the climate until you can’t take it no more, you morons!
I will certainly remain in office!
¹ Red-green only, lacking a yellow light.
I’ve read elsewhere that this means no more money (albeit conjured out of thin air as always) for Ukraine.
What a shame
Many Germans will not now be able to (vicariously) carry on the family tradition – unlike UVL…
Germany will be able to provide most of the 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) pledged to Ukraine even if the 2025 budget cannot be approved on time following the collapse of the coalition government, sources from the budget committee told Reuters.
The funds are largely committed appropriations and can therefore be disbursed under provisional budget management if the budget is not passed, four sources said.
Pushing back Net Zero targets for 5 years will not help anyone, especially Volkswagen, for example. So much for Lindner or his party being ‘pro-business’.
The election period for a German government is 4 years. Pushing this back for 5 years thus would have meant neither this nor the next government will implement this. And as the Net Zero reality will not have improved five years from now, chances are that it will be pushed back for a further five years in five years. And so on. That’s the closest to burying the whole nonsense a German establishment politicia can (presently) openly commit to and Scholz will have understood this as well.
But all the time the nonsense continues. Lindner was not afraid to lose his position in the government so he might have had the courage to say the whole Net Zero business is utterly ridiculous, if he actually believes it to be so. As it stands, the destructive wheel of Net Zero continues to be turned by innumerable international contributors with associated economic destruction and impoverishment. Do we have to wait for Trump to say something, if he ever will?
While he’s not going to go to jail for the former, Lindner can no more admit to being a “climate denier” than he could admit to be a “holocaust denier” without immediately terminating his political career and likely, all chances of having any other professional career ever unless associating himself with either the AfD or the real German far right. And that’s certainly not what he plans to do. My guess would be a he plans to muddle through until Net Zero died on the vine and still be an establishment political someone afterwards.
Freedom is very strictly limited in Germany, even in areas where dissent won’t automatically be treated as the most serious of all crimes.
Government collapses. Probably have an election in 4 months or so.
That’s democracy?
That tells me that Germany doesn’t need this mob of charlatans.
The government didn’t collapse. The FDP left the governing coalition, thus leaving it without a permanent parliamentary majority. See other comment above for some details how that’s going to work out.
Widespread anger and rejection of these ideas would be unthinkable in Germany ten years ago. They do nature-worship better than anyone and so they are particularly susceptible to this agenda but when you can’t eat or stay warm then something else kicks in. England isn’t much better with its truly deranged whore show of the BBC. It doesn’t work this way. You have to allow and facilitate maximum production and development of human potential and have faith that the solutions will come as a result of the application of maximum energy. I know that we don’t have a good record in this regard hence the necessity of faith. This agenda has always been to the detriment of the common man and of course that is its whole purpose. They have a semi-conscious fear the the more that the population increases, inevitably less sway and power they will have and so their instinct will always be to cull or crop.
And people in the UK want proportional representation and the eternal coalition governments that brings.
Oh well. That’s six more months for VW etc to lay off employees and for the German economy to go even further down the pisser.
I expect the SocDems and Greens will get their just reward in due course.
A German chancellor can only be deprived of his office if a Bundestag majority (ie, more than 50% of the MPs) elects different one. That’s theoretically possible but practically impossible. CDU + SPD would work but since the SPD has more MPs, Scholz would remain chancellor. CDU + Greens + FDP would also work but Greens and FDP have just fallen out with each other and support of the Greens would only be available if current political priorities would remain unchanged. Whatever happens, policy in Germany would continue as-is, just possibly with a couple of public face changed.
Which is the absolutely usual outcome of any German election, BTW, as political alternatives are not on offer and hence, voters can’t opt for them.