Wednesday, December 8th, 2021
Once it took 171 days
73 days: Government formation took a long time
With the election of Scholz as Federal Chancellor scheduled for today, the traffic light parties take over government affairs. 73 days have passed since the federal election. Since reunification, the formation of the respective government has only taken twice as long.
The traffic light parties have reached their goal: With the election of Olaf Scholz as Federal Chancellor scheduled for Wednesday, a coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP will take over government affairs for the first time – 73 days after the federal election. Since reunification, government formation has often been faster – but compared to the previous election in 2017, the traffic light partners are around a hundred days faster. An overview:
After the first all-German federal election in December 1990, there was a new edition of the ruling black-yellow coalition under Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the CDU. Forty-seven days passed between the election and the formation of a government.
As a result, there were a number of real lightning starts: the formation of a government took almost exactly one month after the elections in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2009. The minimum was 30 days in 1998 and 2002, when the SPD and the Greens formed joint governments .
A change of coalition partner does not necessarily have to mean that the formation of a government will take longer. In 2005 65 days passed when red-green under SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was replaced by the grand coalition of the Union and Social Democrats headed by Angela Merkel from the CDU. For the subsequent switch to black and yellow after the 2009 election, however, only 31 days were necessary.
It took a particularly long time in 2017/2018
The coalitionists took significantly more time when they went back to the GroKo in 2013. 86 days were already necessary here. There was a lonely record after the election in September 2017. The reason was the failure of the negotiations on the Jamaica coalition of the Union, Greens and FDP, which was initially sought.
After that, against much opposition, the grand coalition of the Union and the SPD was reissued. After successful explorations, the coalition agreement was signed in mid-February after around two weeks of negotiations; this was followed, however, by the SPD’s member survey, the result of which was only available weeks later. The new government was in office only in mid-March 2018 – 171 days after the federal election.