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.