Iran Press/Europe: Germany's chancellor announced that he plans to lead the country with a minority government. This position was against the request of opposition leaders to hold early elections.
Even as Friedrich Merz, leader of parliament's largest opposition bloc, the center-right Christian Democrats, called for an immediate confidence vote in the chancellor and new elections, Scholz said a minority government of the Social Democrats and Greens would continue until early next year.
German opposition parties and business groups on Thursday urged Chancellor Olaf Scholz to trigger a new election quickly to minimize political uncertainty after his rocky three-way coalition collapsed.
The government coalition fell apart on Wednesday when Scholz fired his finance minister, as years of tensions culminated in a row over how to plug a multi-billion-euro hole in the budget and revive Europe's largest economy, headed for its second year of contraction.
The break-up creates a leadership vacuum at the heart of the European Union just as it seeks a united response to Tuesday's election of Donald Trump as U.S. president on issues ranging from possible new U.S. trade tariffs to war in Ukraine and the future of the U.S.-led NATO alliance. 204
