Germany's governing coalition collapses

Berlin: Germany's Free Democrats (FDP) withdrew all ministers from the Scholz government, formally ending three-party "traffic light" coalition.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the centre-right Social Democratic Party (SPD), announces confidence vote in mid-January. The vote could bring forward a snap election in March.

The announcement came after Scholz dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner, coalition partner from the neoliberal  FDP.

Minority governments usually have short lives
A minority government is not completely new to Germany, although they have been rare at the federal, rather than state, level.

Such an arrangement was in play in 1966 under conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and also in 1982 under Helmut Schmidt of the Social Democrats (SPD). Both minority governments only lasted a few weeks.

In the first case, Erhard was replaced by his party colleague Kurt Georg Kiesinger, who managed to forge a grand coalition with the SPD. In the second case, Schmidt's minority government ended with a constructive vote of no confidence, which made Helmut Kohl of the CDU chancellor.

The chances of success for a minority government would hardly be any better today. The SPD and Greens would need partners for each decision on a case-by-case basis.

The conservative union of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), ruled out joining a coalition with the SPD as a junior partner under Chancellor Scholz.

It could, however, help a minority SPD-Green government to gain a majority in the Bundestag as part of a looser confidence-and-supply agreement. However, the CDU-CSU bloc currently appears more interested in pushing for new elections.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is doing the same and support from the populist party for the SPD and Greens would be out of the question on principle.

The socialist Left Party and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which split from the Left, have too few lawmakers in the Bundestag to be considered as a majority provider of support to a potential minority government.