German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence in parliament, leading to preparations for an early election in February.
According to the BBC, Scholz said he expected to lose the vote, believing that triggering an early election was his best option to revive his party.
Ahead of the vote, Scholz said it would be up to voters to “determine the political course of our country.”
207 MPs voted for Scholz, while 394 voted against him and 116 abstained from the vote. Scholz told lawmakers that the upcoming election will determine whether “we, as a strong country, dare to invest strongly in our future; do we have confidence in ourselves and our country, or do we put our future on the line? Do we risk our cohesion and our prosperity by delaying long-overdue investments?”
The move comes as Germany’s right-wing party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), saw historic gains across two state elections in September. AfD received nearly one-third of the vote in Thuringia and finished second in Saxony.
The AfD’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, said that without the AfD, a “stable government is no longer possible at all.”
Scholz’s party was unsuccessful in the state elections, leading him to call the results “bitter.”
“The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation,” Scholz told Reuters at the time. His left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD), was projected to win about 8% of the vote in Thuringia.
According to France 24, there have only been six instances where a chancellor has called a confidence vote in Germany in its postwar history.
