BERLIN (AP) – Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday he was confident of turning around the fortunes of his struggling center-left party and would run for a second term as Germany’s leader in elections due next year, rejecting the suggestion he could emulate the president. from the USA Joe Biden and make way for someone else.
Scholz’s coalition government, which took office at the end of 2021, set out to modernize Germany, but gained a reputation for constant discord and poor communication. All three parties in the alliance saw their support decline.
At the Elections to the European Parliament Last month, the chancellor’s Social Democrats finished third, with just 13.9% of the vote, the worst post-World War II result in a national election. This is far below the 25.7% support with which they narrowly won the last national elections in Germany in 2021.
The drop in support is an “incentive” to do better, and “it’s clear to me that we must convince people with our actions… and with clarity,” Scholz said at his annual summer press conference.
A poll of members of the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, published on Monday suggested that only a third thought he should run again for chancellor in the next election.
Scholz declined to comment on the matter and dismissed the question of whether he could follow Biden’s example. “No, the SPD is a very united party; we are all firmly determined to go into the next election campaign together and win it and I, as Chancellor, will run to become Chancellor again,” he said.
He was quite tight-lipped about the US presidential election. Germany’s last government, in which Scholz was vice-chancellor, maintained sometimes tense relations with the German administration. donald trumpnow the Republican candidate again.
“I will work well with any US government – that’s my job, that’s Germany’s and Europe’s job. We place a lot of value on the transatlantic relationship,” she said. He added that “this is not just a transactional issue that has to do with utility”, but an issue of shared values, such as the rule of law, democracy and freedom.
Asked about his opinion on the Democratic candidate, the vice president Kamala HarrisScholz said he has met her on several occasions and sees her as “a competent and experienced politician who knows exactly what she is doing and has very clear ideas about her country’s role.”
