The German president Frank Walter Steinmeierordered this Friday the dissolution of the lower house of the German Parliament (Bundestag) and confirmed the February 23 as the date on which the general elections.
With this, Steinmeier responds to the request of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who submitted to a vote of confidence only to lose it and force the elections to be brought forward. Scholz made this decision after the collapse of the government coalition made up of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals due to disagreements over the debt brake, which the chancellor asked to be lifted in the face of resistance from his Finance Minister, the liberal Christian Lindner.
“Especially in difficult times, like these, the stability requires a Government capable of acting and reliable majorities in Parliament,” so early elections were the right path for Germany, Steinmeier said in a brief speech from Bellevue Palace, his official residence. “I am convinced that, for the well-being of our country, new elections are now the right path,” he added.
In the campaign that is starting now, the conservative bloc (CDU-CSU) of Friedrich Merzfollowed at 10 points by the extreme right of Alternative for Germany (AfD) and, thirdly, the SPD of Scholz, while the Verdes They would occupy fourth place and the liberals are exposed to the risk of being left out of the Bundestag.
Second year in recession
The elections come at a delicate moment for the German economy, which has been in a two-year recession. Furthermore, the new Executive that emerges from the polls, Steinmeier recalled, will have to deal with the challenges posed by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and their consequences on the Germans, the challenge of immigration, integration, as well as climate change and its effects.
“Politics is always negotiation between what is possible and, at the same time, what cannot be,” Steinmeier highlighted in his speech, before noting that he expects “respect” and “decency” from the electoral campaign, in addition to “transparent means” for the battle. programmatic in a context where there is fear for the interference in the elections of what is the third economy in the world and the first in Europe. “External influence is a danger to democracy, whether covert, as was evidently the case recently in the Romanian elections, or open and blatant, as is currently being practiced particularly intensively on the (social media) platform , said.
“Hatred and violence must have no place in this electoral campaign,” Steinmeier also urged, a week after the attack on a Christmas market in the town of Magdeburg that left five dead and more than 200 injured. The perpetrator of the attack, a Saudi psychiatrist living in Germany since 2006 and with refugee status, publicly declared himself on his social networks as an enemy of Islam and a sympathizer of the AfD.
