Just over a hundred days. An election campaign as brief as it has been intense is drawing to a close in Germany, a country unaccustomed to seeing its political life move at such a frenetic pace. And yet, despite the wave of murderous attacks that have plunged the country into mourning, the Trump administration's support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and the climate of anxiety prevailing in a country that has been in recession for two years, voting intentions have barely moved. Barring a huge surprise, the conservative CDU-CSU will come out on top in the parliamentary elections on Sunday, February 23, and their leader, Friedrich Merz, will succeed the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz (SPD) as chancellor. Le Monde looks back at eight dates that shaped what the Germans have dubbed a "winter campaign."

After months of almost daily fights between the parties in the coalition which, since 2021, has united the SPD, the Greens and the Liberals (FDP), Olaf Scholz dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner, president of the FDP, on November 6. "I am forced to take this decision to avoid any damage to our country. We need a government that can act, that has the strength to take the necessary decisions," said the chancellor. The dispute was about the budget and the borrowing that Scholz has advocated to finance the priorities of the moment: Revitalizing the economy, at a time when the country is in recession, and support for Ukraine, called into question by Trump's victory in the US just the day before.

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