The Social Democrat Olaf Scholz was elected this Wednesday December 8 to the post of chancellor by the Bundestag and succeeds Angela Merkel, who led Germany for sixteen years.
Olaf Scholz is the new Chancellor. He replaces Angela Merkel who held it for sixteen years in this post.
The 63-year-old former finance minister and vice-chancellor Angela Merkel will lead an unprecedented coalition made up of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Liberals of the FDP.
He won 395 votes in the lower house of parliament and will be sworn in at midday.
In a tweet he said: “I said yes”.
Transfer of powers this Wednesday afternoon
The transfer of power with Angela Merkel is scheduled for the beginning of the afternoon at the Chancellery.
The SPD won by a short head in front of the conservative CDU-CSU bloc led by Armin Laschet in the legislative elections of September 26, with 25.7% of the vote against 24.1%.
The Greens won 14.8% of the vote and the Liberal Democratic Party 11.5%.
After four terms …
Angela Merkel had announced that she would hand over after the federal elections, after four consecutive terms as chancellor since 2005.
Social Democrats, environmentalists and liberals sealed a coalition agreement at the end of November – nicknamed “traffic light” in reference to the respective colors of the three parties – with the ambition to modernize Europe’s largest economy through increased public investment in technology green and digital.
But one of the first challenges of the Scholz government will be to face the health crisis, while a new wave of contamination by Covid has been undermining the hospital system for several weeks.
Germany recorded this Wednesday, December 8 the highest number of daily deaths due to Covid-19 since last February, with 527 deaths, bringing the total of deaths to 104,047 since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
