What to Know About the Collapse of Germany’s Government, and What’s Next

Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany called a confidence vote in the German Parliament on Monday. He lost by a tally of 394-207, with 116 abstaining. That effectively ends the unpopular government he has led since 2021.

The vote means Germany will hold new federal elections in early 2025, most likely on Feb. 23. That’s about seven months earlier than originally planned.

Why did Mr. Scholz’s government fall?

In the 2021 elections, Mr. Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats won the most seats, but far short of a majority. He formed a three-party coalition government — Germany’s first in many decades — with two smaller parties, the Greens and the Free Democrats.

That alliance was a significant reason for the government’s instability. The Free Democrats’ conservative economic positions sometimes put them at odds with their coalition partners.

The government was relatively popular at first, but its fortunes began to turn when Germany’s constitutional court ruled that it could not use about 60 billion euros earmarked for the corona pandemic for other purposes.

Fights within the coalition and frequent leaks to the press led to the government quickly losing voter support. After a series of state elections this summer in which all three governing parties suffered, an early end began to seem inevitable. The final break came in November, when Mr. Scholz fired his finance minister, Christian Lindner, the leader of the Free Democrats.