The German government has fired the starting gun for the country’s next general election, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowing to seek a new term as national leader.
The country’s Cabinet picked the Sept 28, 2025 date for the election, in line with the constitutional requirement to hold a vote every four years.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier could, in theory, still block the date if he deems it to be inconvenient, but that is highly unlikely.
There had been speculation about whether Scholz would seek reelection because he and his party have been performing poorly in recent surveys and opinion polls.
But he confirmed during his annual summer news conference in Berlin on Wednesday that he plans to stand, saying: “I will run as chancellor, to become chancellor again.”
Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, or SPD, won Germany’s last general election in 2021, but the party did not get enough lawmakers elected to govern alone and formed a coalition with the Greens and the centrist FDP.
The three-party coalition government has stuttered at times, with its member parties clashing over issues including the fight against climate change and budget spending. It has also struggled to present a united front on issues including the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the energy crisis, and the best ways to combat inflation.
While the three members of the ruling coalition have seen their popularity wane, right-wing and extreme right-wing parties have attracted increasing support, setting up the potential for a hard fought, closely contested election next year.
As if to underline the challenge facing the SPD, the party had its poorest showing ever in June’s European Parliament elections, securing only 14 percent of the vote.
And several grassroots SPD party members have turned their backs on Scholz a result, with Germany’s Deutsche Welle news agency reporting that a recent survey showed two-thirds of them do not think he is the right person to lead the party into the next election.
However, Scholz insisted the party is “very united behind what I am doing”.
“There has probably never been such a united SPD as the one we put together before the (2021) federal election and it managed to win the… election from a difficult starting position,” the Agence France-Presse news agency quoted him as saying. “We will remain united and pursue our course.”
Saying that poor opinion poll results “spur you on to achieve better poll results”, Scholz said he and his party will succeed in “turning things round” before next year’s election.
But Europe’s largest economy was the world’s worst-performing major economy last year and growth this year is predicted to only be around 0.3 percent, suggesting the clock is running down on Scholz being saved by good economic news before the election.
