In a nationally televised debate on Feb. 9, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) displayed pluck and conviction. On the campaign trail, Scholz’s pugnacity—not a characteristic that Germans know from his three-year chancellorship—has enabled him to score points against opponent Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) candidate. But though most observers judged Scholz the debate’s narrow victor, this kind of win isn’t anything near enough for his left-of-center party to catch up to Merz’s conservatives before election day on Feb. 23. The CDU leads the Social Democrats by nearly double digits, and the leftists also lag behind the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Nevertheless, the Social Democrats are the conservatives’ most likely coalition partner and will probably join their rivals in government under Merz. Since Scholz has said that he won’t play second fiddle after serving as chancellor himself, his political career—at least in electoral politics—will most probably come to an end next week, with a whimper rather than a bang.
This is a disappointing finale for the career politician who joined the party of former Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1975 at the age of 17. With a curly red mop, the son of a textile worker rose in the SPD’s ranks as a firebrand dedicated to socialist policies and nuclear disarmament. By the late 1990s, he had modified his politics and joined the Bundestag, where he steadily crept up the party hierarchy, eventually becoming a cabinet secretary and the vice chancellor—in governments led by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel—as well as SPD chief and the mayor of the northern city of Hamburg.
Scholz, photographed in Berlin circa 2002.Ullstein Bild archive/via Getty Images
In 2021, after four Merkel terms, Scholz bested the CDU’s reliable electoral machine with the help of an unexpectedly hapless conservative adversary, Armin Laschet. Scholz had cultivated a reputation as a constructive, sober moderate, campaigning on a promise to show more “respect” for the working class. The key to his 2021 victory may have been that he resembled Merkel even more than did the CDU’s Laschet.
“Scholz projects modesty, a lot like Merkel did,” said Mark Schieritz, the author of a biography of Scholz, to Foreign Policy. “Neither one of them is strictly ideological or desires confrontation,” Schieritz added. “They reach out across boundaries to negotiate solutions. This worked well for Scholz for a long time, but it led to his downfall, too.”
In the aftermath of the 2021 election, Scholz’s bridge-building skills were on display as he welded together a three-party ruling coalition that included the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. After the long and lethargic Merkel era, this triumvirate looked refreshingly modern, progressive, and tech-savvy—and made Germans tingle with excitement.
The “traffic-light” (red-green-yellow) coalition promised to breathe new life into a republic that had fallen behind in terms of innovation and digital progress. Finally, Germany would embark with gusto on a social, ecological, and pro-business transformation in sync with the zeitgeist.
This exceptional experiment was just getting underway when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, throwing all of Europe into concentric crises: The continent’s post-Cold War security order was upended, nuclear war on European soil became thinkable again, and the European Union’s energy supply was dangerously depleted. Until the war’s onset, all of Germany’s parties—save the Greens—bought into the fantasy that energy security was best served by purchasing as much cheap Russian gas as possible, making Germany reliant on Russia for 55 percent of its natural gas.
With access to Russian gas constrained, Germany scurried to keep homes warm and factories running through the 2022-2023 winter. Germans wore long johns to work and winter hats at home; night lighting in public buildings and private enterprises, too, was banned; swimming pools and gyms closed.
To Scholz’s credit, the chancellor and his team rose to the occasion. Scholz proclaimed a Zeitenwende—a watershed moment or epochal turn—that included a defense spending boost of 100 billion euros (about $112.7 billion), shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity with Ukraine, and the replacement of imported Russian fossil fuels. By scrambling and skimping, Germany emerged with just enough gas in its storage tanks and went a long way to making itself energy-independent from Russia. The Atlantic alliance was reinvigorated, and by 2023, Germany was Europe’s largest single donor to Ukraine. Scholz simultaneously showed prudence and tact, conscious that Germans’ fear of nuclear war in Europe had to be taken seriously.
“The Russian war threw Germany into a massive crisis that no one had anticipated—perhaps its biggest ever,” said Lars Haider, the editor of the daily Hamburger Abendblatt and a close follower of Scholz’s career. “Under Scholz,” he added, “the coalition worked splendidly—as one team focused on a goal. Germans felt that their leadership was coming through for them.”
Scholz might have entered the history books as a productive, even enlightened chancellor—and could perhaps have won reelections—had a November 2023 German constitutional court ruling not demolished the coalition’s joint project.
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The government’s headline investment project, a “climate and transformation” package, counted on 60 billion euros ($64 billion) of supplementary debt that had gone unused for its original purpose—namely, to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Critically, there was something for each party in the package—from the development of clean tech to the renovation of old housing stock and infrastructure renewal. The projects papered over policy differences and competition between the parties.
But the court ruled that this special debt fund was specifically earmarked for the pandemic and nothing else. Thus, calling upon this much debt would violate Germany’s “debt break” rule, which restricts the German public deficit to 0.35 percentof GDP.
From one day to the next, the parties from opposing ideological corners—social democratic, environmentalist, liberal—no longer had common purpose and began to flounder on their underlying antagonisms, while the far right capitalized on the self-destructive animosity and a series of amateur faux pas, too. Scholz’s popularity, and that of his party and the coalition, nosedived.
“Scholz was so focused on the coalition itself that he lost touch with ordinary Germans,” Haider said.
“Scholz’s fatal error was to think that he could negotiate his way out of this budgetary conundrum rather than tackle it head on,” said Schieritz, the biographer. “He should have called for this hole in the budget to be covered with taxes, debt, or cuts elsewhere. But he didn’t. This turned 2024 into one prolonged budget battle that nobody could win.”
Scholz speaks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the North Sea Summit on offshore wind energy in Denmark on May 18, 2022.Bo Amstrup/AFP via Getty Images
Indeed, there were options, such as suspending the debt brake, which the SPD and Greens favored. Yet the Free Democrats’ frontman and the government’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, refused to budge. The then-45-year-old free marketeer with five-day beard insisted that the government abide by a mechanism so ultraconservative that many serious economists, even some German ones, roll their eyes at it in bewilderment.
Lindner’s steadfast rejection of more debt and his disingenuous maneuvering within the coalition eventually spent even Scholz’s legendary patience. On Nov. 6, 2024, Scholz expelled Lindner from his post, which resulted in most Free Democrats withdrawing their support from the coalition and—thus—the setting of snap elections.
This debacle may have defined the Scholz years, but the coalition could nevertheless claim a few accomplishments beyond the Ukraine crisis. In terms of sustainability, the Scholz government opened the door to a massive, 60 percentjump in installed solar power capacity, while onshore wind power grew by 14 percent. It set in motion the refurbishment and expansion of the railways, and introduced a nationwide flat-rate public transport ticket that increased the affordability of transport. Moreover, in terms of social policy, the minimum wage was hiked and social welfare was reformed, measures that particularly benefited women and employees in eastern Germany. Families now receive greater benefits, and the country’s pension system was girded, too.
But with Ukraine, as with the budget, Scholz tried to please everyone involved. Germany reached deep into its pockets to support Kyiv (only the United States has spent more)—yet at the same time, it gave the impression of doing so only grudgingly. Scholz often dragged his heels, for example, and questioned the delivery of sophisticated weaponry. His response to Ukraine’s invasion split opinion in Germany and won him no points with either the peace lobby or the hawks.
Scholz gives a statement, following an informal summit of European leaders on the situation in Ukraine and European security, at the German Embassy in Paris on Feb. 17.Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images
No matter the light cast on the Scholz government’s achievements, they are dramatically overshadowed by its manifold shortcomings. The Ukraine war drags on with Russia inching across the country by the day. Germany’s economy suffers from two years of recession, inflation has riddled the middle class, and the country’s 2030 climate goals look out of sight. Moreover, the railways are still perpetually late.
Haider noted that with Scholz’s demise, the Merkel era is finally coming to a definitive end: “Scholz shared more of Merkel than Merz does—much more. We’re seeing a distinctly different kind of politician take over,” he told Foreign Policy.
Olaf Scholz could have chosen another way to leave Germany’s stage: namely, by stepping aside last year to let Germany’s most popular Social Democrat, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, carry the party’s torch. Naturally, it’s impossible to say whether Pistorius had a better shot than Scholz. But considering Scholz’s lifelong service to Germany, it might have been more dignified to leave of his own volition rather than be romped by an unforgiving opponent—and the far right, too.