(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and opposition lawmakers are close to an agreement on holding an early election in February, according to government officials familiar with the talks, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential planning.
Scholz, who dismantled his ruling coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats last week, will need to trigger the national ballot by first submitting to a confidence vote in the lower house of parliament. That vote will likely come in the first half of December and once the chancellor loses that, he can ask the president to dissolve parliament and set an election date within 60 days.
Carsten Linnemann, general secretary of the opposition Christian Democratic Union, told broadcaster ZDF on Tuesday that snap elections could take place on Feb. 16 or 23.
“New elections are needed as soon as possible,” he said.
Scholz has signaled an openness to moving the confidence vote before Christmas after initially aiming for mid-January. He said an accelerated time frame would depend on an agreement between parliamentary leaders of his party and the two groups backing his challenger Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democrat who’s seeking the chancellorship.
Europe’s largest economy was plunged into political uncertainty last week after Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party, breaking up the governing coalition in a dispute over borrowing money to boost military support for Ukraine.
While polls suggest Merz is the election frontrunner, Scholz on Sunday expressed confidence that he can win, saying he previously defied bad poll numbers before winning the chancellorship in 2021. He also said he expects his party to back him to run for another term.
(Updates with opposition lawmaker comments starting in third paragraph.)
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