Is the change in Germany’s Chancellor really a quick fix?

People love talking about people. So it is hardly surprising that the media is currently fixated on the question of who might replace Chancellor Friedrich…

Published on: 28.09.2026
Reading time: 7 mins
Author: Timm Bopp

People love talking about people. So it is hardly surprising that the media is currently fixated on the question of who might replace Chancellor Friedrich Merz. But it would be more worthwhile to look at what lies beneath that debate: the procedures. That is particularly true in a federal, party-based system whose political landscape is currently undergoing significant realignment.

Who can trigger a change, who has to approve it and what would it set in motion at federal and state level? Those are the real questions. Not who the next chancellor might be.

How a Chancellor loses office in Germany

Articles 63, 67, 68, 69 and 81 of the Basic Law govern the ways in which a chancellorship can end. In the current situation, three routes appear plausible. They differ mainly in who initiates the process and who takes the subsequent decisions.

Resignation. There is no gatekeeper here: the Chancellor decides alone. With his resignation, the terms of office of all federal ministers also come to an end; the government remains in office in a caretaker capacity. What follows could be weeks of negotiations over a successor. In the worst case, there would be fresh elections.

Vote of confidence. Here too, the initiative lies solely with the Chancellor. At least 48 hours must pass between the motion being tabled and the vote. If he loses, the decision is no longer his: the Bundestag then has 21 days in which to elect a new chancellor before the initiative passes to the Federal President.

Constructive vote of no confidence. The motion requires the support of 158 members of the Bundestag and a rival candidate who can secure an absolute majority; here too, at least 48 hours must elapse between the motion and the vote. Without support from the coalition parties, neither hurdle can be cleared. If the coalition parties are united, however, this is the most efficient route to electing a new chancellor.

The procedure behind a change of Chancellor

Five aspects stand out that have so far been largely overlooked in the debate and almost all of them are linked to the uncertainty inherent in the current political system.

First: time

The first source of uncertainty is built into the procedures themselves: the sheer amount of time that can pass between the initial trigger and the formation of a new government. Every option involves deadlines and multiple actors. In volatile times, when the political landscape can appear to shift within 24 or 48 hours, that tends to create instability rather than confidence.

Either those responsible settle the key questions in advance, or they expose the country to weeks of uncertainty. Either way, a change of chancellor is a matter of weeks, not days.

Second: It takes more than the Union

The Christian Democrats, the CDU/CSU Union, cannot simply replace the Chancellor. Not on their own, at least. Every route to a new chancellor depends on other actors agreeing to it and none of them will do so without expecting something in return.

First, the Social Democrats (SPD). If the Chancellor resigns, his government is dismissed with him, including the SPD ministers; the government would effectively have to be renegotiated from scratch. The SPD’s price is unlikely to be less left-leaning policy – more likely the opposite.

Then there is the party’s own situation. It is currently moving from one internal personnel debate to the next. Another period of political limbo is the last thing either its ministers or its parliamentary leadership would want. After a possible election victory by Manuela Schwesig in one of the federal states, calls for fresh momentum within the party are likely to grow louder anyway. Why give up your own momentum to take on somebody else’s risk?

Then there is the Union’s own parliamentary group. Any change requires a majority in the Bundestag, and the coalition has a margin of just twelve votes. Anyone who remembers the gruelling chancellor election in May 2025 knows that this is not much room for manoeuvre, particularly for an experiment conducted under time pressure and in the full glare of public scrutiny.

And finally, there is the Federal President. Following a resignation, he proposes a successor to the Bundestag “within a reasonable period”. The Basic Law does not specify what that means. It could be days. It could be weeks.

Third: High risk in the Bundestag, with no safety net

Replacing the Chancellor “surgically”, without destabilising the Bundestag as a whole? It is an appealing idea. The problem is that, unlike during the Ampel era, there is no obvious alternative coalition waiting in the wings.

Without the SPD, the Union’s only mathematical majority would be with the AfD, something ruled out by its own incompatibility resolution. Nor would the Christian Democrats and Greens alone command a majority.

If the attempt to replace the Chancellor failed, bringing the Greens into government would remain an option; but it would hardly make governing any easier. And fresh elections? Germany’s political centre has little appetite for them, because the polls are unambiguous: forming a majority in a new Bundestag would not become easier, not even for a coalition of the Union, SPD and Greens, let alone a red-red-green coalition of the SPD, Greens and the Left. The only beneficiary would be a party on the political fringe: the AfD.

Fourth: Two routes that hardly anyone seems to have on their radar

Could fresh elections happen anyway? Yes, because two scenarios could unfold without either the Chancellor or the coalition leadership being able to control them.

One is a split or a walkout. Just 13 of the coalition’s 328 MPs would be enough to deprive it of its majority. It is the only route in which the initiative lies with neither the Chancellor nor the parliamentary group leaders.

The other is one of the coalition parties withdrawing altogether. Highly unlikely but not impossible.

That is what makes the current situation so remarkable: every relevant actor has an interest in nothing happening. Yet none of them can prevent it on their own.

Fifth: The autonomy of the federal states

One thing easily overlooked in Berlin is that the names currently being floated lead state governments of their own — with their own electoral timetables and coalition constraints.

North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and Schleswig-Holstein hold elections in spring 2027. A Minister-President who moves to Berlin less than six months before a state election leaves behind a successor without the advantage of incumbency; we have just seen how that can play out in Saxony-Anhalt.

Would the Greens in NRW support Hendrik Wüst leaving shortly before the state election? That is far from certain. Would Bavaria’s already tense CSU risk Markus Söder stepping down as Minister-President at short notice without triggering internal conflict? Equally uncertain.

Even where no election is imminent, succession at state level still has to be coordinated with coalition partners. Formally, they have no say in the decision. In practice, their support can determine whether the state government survives the transition.

National politics regularly underestimates how reluctant state parties are to give up their most nationally prominent political figures.

What remains

One point keeps getting lost in this debate, and it matters to anyone with a stake in pending legislation: a change of chancellor without the dissolution of the Bundestag does not trigger legislative discontinuity. Pending initiatives continue. The experience of how the previous Federal Government came to an end is misleading in this respect.

Five perspectives, one conclusion: a change of chancellor is not an administrative act. It is an intervention in the structural balance of the entire coalition, at both federal and state level. Anyone who underestimates that is mistaking a personnel debate for a procedural one.