German chancellor Olaf Scholz has sacked his liberal finance minister Christian Lindner, plunging the eurozone’s largest economy into political chaos hours after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election. The move, which came during a meeting of senior ministers on Wednesday evening, brings the curtain down on a deeply unpopular coalition government that had become a byword for discord and acrimony.
The sacking of Lindner is likely to precipitate snap elections more than six months before they were due to be held next September, ushering in a long period of uncertainty that the EU can ill afford as it braces for a trade war with the US while trying to fend off a growing economic threat from China. The trigger for Lindner’s dismissal was a dispute over next year’s budget.