Olaf Scholz
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Olaf Scholz (born 14 June 1958) is a German politician who served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice Chancellor in the fourth Merkel cabinet and as Federal Minister of Finance from 2018 to 2021. He was also First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018, deputy leader of the SPD from 2009 to 2019, and Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 2007 to 2009. Scholz began his career as a lawyer specialising in labour and employment law. He became a member of the SPD in the 1970s and was a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2011. Scholz served in the Hamburg Government under First Mayor Ortwin Runde in 2001 and became general secretary of the SPD in 2002, where he served alongside SPD leader and then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He became his party's chief whip in the Bundestag, later entering the First Merkel Government in 2007 as Federal Minister for Labour and Social Affairs. After the SPD moved into the opposition following the 2009 federal election, Scholz returned to lead the SPD in Hamburg. He was then elected deputy leader of the SPD. He led his party to victory in the 2011 Hamburg state election and became first mayor, a position he held until 2018. After the Social Democratic Party entered the fourth Merkel government in 2018, Scholz was appointed as both minister of finance and Vice Chancellor of Germany. In 2020, he was nominated as the SPD's candidate for Chancellor of Germany for the 2021 federal election. The party won a plurality of seats in the Bundestag and formed a "traffic light coalition" with Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party. On 8 December 2021, Scholz was elected and sworn in as chancellor by the Bundestag, succeeding Angela Merkel. As chancellor, Scholz oversaw Germany's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite giving a restrained and timid response compared to many other Western leaders, Scholz oversaw a significant increase in the German defence budget, weapons shipments to Ukraine, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was put on hold. Three days after the invasion, Scholz set out the principles of a new German defence policy in his Zeitenwende speech. In September 2022, three of the four Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed. During the Gaza war, he authorized substantial German military and medical aid to Israel, and denounced the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups. In November 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court demanded budget cuts totaling €60 billion to ensure the government would not surpass debt limits as set in the constitution; this proved a significant challenge for Scholz's cabinet and contributed to the 2023–2024 protests. On 6 November 2024, his government majority collapsed as he dismissed Christian Lindner from the post of Federal Minister of Finance and broke up the coalition agreement. On 16 December 2024, Scholz lost a vote of confidence and in the following snap election on 23 February 2025, his SPD lost to Friedrich Merz's CDU, placing third (behind Union and AfD) for the lowest result in its post-war history.