Scholz convinced of his own candidacy for chancellor: “Yes”
Published: Saturday, Jun 15th 2024, 10:40
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Germany's head of government Olaf Scholz is firmly convinced that he will once again be the candidate for chancellor of his SPD party in next year's parliamentary elections. His Social Democrats plummeted to 13.9 percent in last Sunday's European elections, their worst result ever in a nationwide election.
In an ARD interview on Saturday, he answered the question of whether he was certain to be the SPD's next candidate for chancellor against the backdrop of criticism with a narrow "yes". At the same time, he reiterated why he did not want to call a vote of confidence after the poor result of the "traffic light" parties in the European elections.
"The fact is that the government has a majority in parliament. We have just passed laws this week in the German Bundestag and we have a mandate to fulfill and do our job. That's what we're doing," said Scholz, who was interviewed before leaving the G7 summit in Bari, Italy. With 11.9 percent for the Greens, who also suffered heavy losses, and 5.2 percent for the FDP, the "traffic light" coalition governed by Scholz only achieved a total of 31 percent in the European elections. In the 2021 Bundestag election, the three parties had achieved a combined 52%.
Scholz did not want to "judge from the outside" the fact that French President Emmanuel Macron is taking a different approach and has called parliamentary elections at short notice. France has a very different political system to Germany. Scholz said: "There is a directly elected president. There is no proportional representation, but constituencies in which only the deputies are elected."
©Keystone/SDA
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