Germany's Scholz says ready to hold confidence vote this year

BERLIN — Germany's embattled Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Sunday he would be ready to ask for a confidence vote this year to pave the way for snap elections.

Scholz, whose coalition collapsed on Wednesday, said that "asking for the vote of confidence before Christmas, if all sides agree, is no problem at all for me".

Previously, he had spoken of a mid-January confidence vote which under German election rules could lead to a late-March election -- half a year earlier than previously scheduled.

"I also want that it happens quickly," the centre-left leader told public broadcaster ARD, referring to a return to the ballot boxes.

"I am not glued to my post," added Scholz, who has been the leader of Europe's biggest economy for almost three years.

The coalition crisis, rooted in differences over economic and fiscal policy, came to a head late Wednesday when Scholz sacked his rebellious finance minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democrats.

That reduced the unruly three-party coalition government to two parties, Scholz's Social Democrats and the Greens.

Scholz's political rivals have threatened to block his minority government from passing laws unless he immediately seeks a confidence vote, suggesting he do so next Wednesday.

The chancellor said his party's parliamentary leader Rolf Muetzenich should hold talks on the timing of the confidence vote with the head of the conservative opposition CDU, Friedrich Merz.

He did however caution that all necessary technical preparations had to be in place to allow for a speedy new election.

After the confidence vote, which Scholz is expected to lose, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will have 21 days to dissolve the Bundestag, and new elections will then have to be held within 60 days.

'Great differences'

Germany's political crisis erupted just as Donald Trump won the White House race with as yet unknown consequences for transatlantic relations and trade, and for the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Scholz, who said he would run again as his party's top candidate, said Germany needed a stable new government, legitimised by a new mandate, as soon as possible.

In the election campaign ahead, he said he would point to the "great differences" between his Social Democrats, the traditional workers party, and the centre-right CDU of former chancellor Angela Merkel.

Asked what would be the key differences between him and Merz, a millionaire former corporate lawyer, he replied: "I think I'm a little bit cooler when it comes to matters of state."

According to a poll published in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper conducted by the Insa institute, the CDU and their Bavarian allies the CSU lead at 32 percent.

They are followed by the far-right Alternative for Germany at 19 percent, although all other parties have vowed not to cooperate with the anti-immigration party.

Scholz's Social Democrat is polling at third place with 15 percent, the Greens with 10 percent and the Free Democrats at four percent, one point below the threshold to remain in parliament.

Scholz also rejected charges by his sacked finance minister that he had, in the end, engineered the dramatic coalition breakup.

"I did not provoke it," he told ARD.