Olaf Scholz, who is likely to succeed Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, is a veteran German politician from the centre-left Social Democrat (SPD) party. His party has won over Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany by a slight margin in the recently concluded elections.
If Scholz forms a coalition and becomes Germany’s next chancellor, he will end the 16-year-old conservative rule in the country. His party last won in 2005.
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In outgoing Merkel’s cabinet, Scholz has served as the Vice Chancellor of Germany and Federal Minister of Finance. He assumed office on March 14, 2018. Before that, he served as the First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018 and was also the Deputy Leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 2009 to 2019.
A lawyer by qualification with specialisation in labour and employment law, Scholz joined the Social Democratic Party in the 1970s
and was a member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2011.
After stepping down as his party’s General Secretary in 2004, Scholz became his party’s Chief Whip in the Bundestag. He entered the Merkel cabinet for the first time in 2007 as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs.
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After the SPD left the Government following the 2009 election, Scholz returned to lead the SPD in Hamburg and was also elected Deputy Leader of the SPD. He led his party to victory in the 2011 state elections, becoming First Mayor, holding that role until 2018.
In 2019, Scholz ran for the newly introduced dual leadership of
his party on a joint ticket with former Brandenburg state representative Klara
Geywitz. However, the duo lost by 45% of the margin to the winners Norbert Walter-Borjans
and Saskia Esken, despite winning the most votes in the first round. This led
him to step down from his position as Deputy Leader of SPD.
In 2020, Scholz was nominated as the SPD’s prime candidate for Chancellor of Germany for the 2021 federal election.
