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 was born in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, and grew up in Hamburg. After graduating from high school, he studied law at the University of Hamburg. 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 the 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.
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Early life and education
Olaf Scholz was born on 14 June 1958, in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, and grew up in Hamburg's Rahlstedt district. His parents worked in the textile industry. He has two younger brothers, Jens Scholz, an anesthesiologist and CEO of the University Medical Center Schleswig Holstein; and Ingo Scholz, a tech entrepreneur.
Scholz attended the Bekassinenau elementary school in Oldenfelde and then switched to the Großlohering elementary school in Großlohe. After graduating from high school in 1977, he began studying law at the University of Hamburg in 1978 as part of a one-stage legal training course. He later found employment as a lawyer specialising in labour and employment law, working at the law firm Zimmermann, Scholz und Partner. Scholz joined the Social Democratic Party at the age of 17.
Scholz's family is traditionally Lutheran, and he was baptized in the Protestant Church in Germany. He holds largely secular political views, and left the Church in adulthood, but has emphasised a need for appreciation of Germany's Christian heritage and culture.
Political career
Early political career
Olaf Scholz joined the SPD in 1975 as a student, where he came into contact with the Jusos, the youth organization of the SPD. From 1982 to 1988, he was Deputy Federal Chairman of the Jusos. Scholz was also Vice President of the International Union of Socialist Youth from 1987 to 1989. He supported the Freudenberger Kreis, a Marxist wing of the Jusos' university groups, arguing that society should "overcome the capitalist economy" in one of his publications. In it, Scholz criticized the "aggressive-imperialist NATO", the Federal Republic as the "European stronghold of big business" and the social-liberal coalition, which puts the "bare maintenance of power above any form of substantive dispute". Referring to this period in his life, Scholz later said that he "made almost all possible mistakes at some point".
On 4 January 1984, Olaf Scholz and other Juso leaders attended a meeting in East Germany with Egon Krenz, then secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, and Herbert Häber, member of the Politburo of the SED-Central Committee. In 1987, Scholz crossed the inner-German border again and stood up for disarmament agreements as Juso-Vice at an FDJ peace rally in Wittenberg alongside FDJ head Eberhard Aurich.
Scholz was elected to his first political office as a Deputy Member of the Bundestag representing the constituency of Hamburg-Altona in 1998, aged 40. During his tenure, Scholz served on the Committee for Labour and Social Matters. In the committee of inquiry into the visa affair of the Bundestag, he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Scholz resigned his mandate on 6 June 2001, to take office as Senator. Because his seat was an overhang seat, it was not filled until the 2002 German federal election.
On 30 May 2001, Scholz succeeded Hartmuth Wrocklage to become Senator for the Interior of Hamburg in the Senate led by Mayor Ortwin Runde. Wrocklage had resigned due to allegations of nepotism. He also succeeded Wrocklage as Deputy Member of the Bundesrat.
During his brief time as Senator, Scholz approved the involuntary use of emetics to gather evidence from suspected drug dealers. The measure was controversial: the Hamburg Medical Chamber expressed disapproval of this practice due to potential health risks as did his then coalition partner GAL calling it "a serious violation of privacy and physical integrity" and the practice was ruled illegal in 2006 by the European Court of Human Rights.
Federal and state political career
Scholz was elected again to the Bundestag in the 2002 German federal election. From 2002 to 2004, Scholz also served as General Secretary of the SPD; he resigned from that office when party leader and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, facing disaffection within his own party and hampered by persistently low public approval ratings, announced he would step down as Leader of the Social Democratic Party.
Scholz was one of a series of politicians who sparked debate over the German journalistic norm of allowing interviewees to "authorize" and amend quotes before publication. This came after his press team insisted on extensively editing an interview with Die Tageszeitung in 2003. Die Tageszeitung editor Bascha Mika condemned the norm as a "betrayal of the claim to a free press", and the newspaper ultimately published the interview with Scholz's answers blacked out.
Scholz served as the SPD spokesperson on the inquiry committee investigating the 2005 German Visa Affair. Following the federal election later that year, he served as First Parliamentary Secretary of the SPD Bundestag Group. He also became Chief Whip of the Social Democratic Party. In this capacity, he worked closely with the CDU Chief Whip Norbert Röttgen to manage and defend the grand coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag. Scholz also served as a member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel, which provides parliamentary oversight of the German federal intelligence services; the BND, MAD and BfV.
In 2007, Scholz was appointed to serve as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in the first Merkel Government, succeeding Franz Müntefering.
Following the 2009 federal election, when the SPD left the Government, Scholz was elected as Deputy Leader of the SPD, replacing Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Between 2009 and 2011, he was also a member of the SPD group's Afghanistan/Pakistan Task Force. In 2010, he participated in the annual Bilderberg Meeting in Sitges, Spain.
In 2011, Scholz was the lead SPD candidate at the Hamburg state election, which the SPD won with 48.3% of the votes, taking 62 of 121 seats in the Hamburg Parliament. Scholz resigned as a Member of the Bundestag on 11 March 2011, days after his formal election as First Mayor of Hamburg; Dorothee Stapelfeldt, also a Social Democrat, was appointed his Deputy First Mayor.
Chancellor of Germany (2021–2025)
Scholz was elected as chancellor by the Bundestag on 8 December 2021, with 395 votes in favour and 303 against. His new government was appointed on the same day by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. At 63 years, 177 days of age, Scholz is the oldest person to become chancellor since Konrad Adenauer, who was 73 years, 253 days old when he assumed office on 15 September 1949.
Foreign policy
In December 2021, Scholz travelled to Warsaw for talks with Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, where they discussed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would bring Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany and bypass Poland, and Poland's dispute with the European Union over the primacy of EU law. Scholz backed Poland's efforts to stop the flow of migrants seeking entry from Belarus.
Scholz extended into 2022 the suspension of the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. The decision was made to "no longer approve any export sales to countries as long as they are directly involved" in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. In September 2022, Scholz visited the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, seeking to deepen ties with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and find alternative sources of energy. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman received Scholz in Jeddah. Scholz's government approved new arms export deals to Saudi Arabia, despite a ban imposed as a result of the Saudi war in Yemen and the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Scholz called the United States "Europe's closest and most important partner". Upon assuming the chancellorship in December 2021, he stated he would soon be meeting with President Joe Biden, saying: "It is now clear what binds us together."
On 22 February 2022, Scholz announced that Germany would be halting its approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in response to Russia's recognition of two self-declared separatist republics within Ukraine. Scholz spoke against allowing the European Union to cut Russia off from the SWIFT global interbank payment system.
In an emergency meeting of the Bundestag on 27 February, Scholz made the Zeitenwende speech, announcing a complete reversal of German military and foreign policy, including the commencement of weapons shipments to Ukraine and a €100 billion increase in Germany's defense budget. Scholz succeeded in obtaining the two-thirds majority necessary to amend the debt ceiling to allow Germany to establish a 100 billion euro defense fund that would not be subject to the restrictions. One reporter called it a path to "an emergency military modernization, defence spending, energy independence from Russia, lethal assistance for Ukraine and EU financing for weaponry". However, in a press conference on 19 April, Scholz spoke about slowing Germany's provision of weaponry to Ukraine, which was seen as reducing the scale of the policy change.
Domestic policy
On 6 November 2024, Scholz removed Finance Minister Christian Lindner from his position, citing loss of trust. Lindner's removal led to the collapse of the governing coalition. The government crisis was complicated by the fact that the German economy entered its second consecutive year of recession. Germany also faced a severe housing crisis in 2024, leading Scholz to describe housing as Germany's most pressing social issue.
In October 2024, Scholz warned of the deindustrialization of Germany. In December 2024, Scholz criticized Volkswagen's plan to close factories in Germany. He proposed a European subsidy programme for electric vehicles. He also pledged support for the German steel industry, which was facing high energy costs.
In September 2024, pollster Infratest dimap found that Scholz's approval rating was 18%, one of the lowest ever recorded by a German chancellor.
During his campaign in the 2021 election, Scholz opposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Since late November 2021, he has expressed support for mandatory vaccination for adults, scheduled to be voted during the first months of 2022 by the federal parliament, and for the closure of non-essential retail stores to unvaccinated adults, based on the 2G-Regel, decreed by state governments in December 2021.
On 13 January 2022, Scholz told lawmakers in the Bundestag that Germany should make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for all adults. Later that month, he warned that the COVID-19 pandemic would not "miraculously" disappear and that compulsory vaccinations were necessary. The opposition Christian Democratic Union criticized the government for not taking a firm decision on a vaccine mandate. The far-right Alternative for Germany party wanted Scholz's government to ban vaccine mandates.
In December 2021, Scholz said that Germany was a country of immigration and pledged to reduce barriers to immigration to Germany and make it easier for immigrants to obtain German citizenship. 352,000 people applied for asylum in Germany in 2023, the highest number since 2016, when 722,370 people applied for asylum. People from Ukraine are not included among asylum seekers. Most asylum seekers in 2023 were from Turkey, Syria and Afghanistan. In September 2023, more than 120 boats carrying approximately 7,000 migrants from Africa arrived on the island of Lampedusa within 24 hours. Some of the migrants were relocated to Germany.
SPD chancellor candidate (2025)
In November 2024, various SPD legislators and leading figures – most prominently former party leader Sigmar Gabriel – began publicly calling for defence minister Boris Pistorius to be designated the party's chancellor candidate owing to its and Scholz's poor polling. Polling for ARD showed Pistorius as the most favourably viewed national politician: 60% of voters thought he would be a good chancellor, compared to 42% for Merz and 21% for Scholz. In a video released on 21 November 2024, Pistorius ended what had become two weeks of public debate by disavowing any interest in running for chancellor and expressing his full support for Scholz. Such a protracted and public debate, and party leadership's apparent inability to quickly control or restrain it, was seen as embarrassing and damaging; Jusos president Philipp Türmer directly called out party leaders Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil for the "shitshow" at their national congress the following weekend. Nonetheless, Scholz was unanimously renominated as chancellor candidate by the party's executive, a group which includes Pistorius, on 25 November 2024. Scholz's nomination was confirmed at a party congress on 11 January 2025; as is usual for sitting chancellors, the vote was by acclamation rather than secret ballot and he received little opposition.
On 16 December 2024, Scholz lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag, paving the way for elections to be held on 23 February 2025. Exit polls showed that the SPD fell to third place and fell below 20% for the first time since 1933, while also achieving its worst result in terms of vote share since the 1887 federal election, held in the German Empire. After the first exit polls were published, Scholz announced he would not seek to be part of a government led by Friedrich Merz. As a result, Co-party leader Lars Klingbeil also became parliamentary group leader of the SPD, while Co-party leader Saskia Esken is currently still in this office. Scholz was elected to the 21st Bundestag by winning his constituency through the first vote in the 2025 German federal election. He has said that he intends to take up his mandate.
Political views
Within the SPD, Scholz is widely viewed as forming part of the moderate wing of the party. Because of his flat enunciation and mechanical-sounding choice of words in press conferences and interviews, Scholz has been nicknamed "the Scholzomat" by some media outlets. In 2013, he said that he found the nickname "very appropriate".
Economic and financial policy
Scholz has been campaigning for a financial transaction tax for several years. Experts have criticized parts of this plan, arguing that it would disproportionately affect small shareholders. In December 2019, Scholz pushed for the introduction of this tax at European Union level. According to a draft legislation, share purchases should be taxed when they involve shares in companies with a market capitalization over €1B. Journalist Hermann-Josef Tenhagen criticized this version of the transaction tax on the basis that it would disproportionately affect lower-income individuals. A report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy commissioned by the Federal Government in 2020 certified the same deficiencies in the tax concept that Tenhagen had already pointed out.
During his tenure as minister of finance, Scholz prioritized not taking on new government debt and limiting public spending. In 2018, he suggested the creation of an EU-wide unemployment insurance system to make the Eurozone more resilient to future economic shocks.
Environment and climate policy
In September 2019, Scholz negotiated the climate package in a key role for the SPD. To this, he said: "What we have presented is a great achievement", whereas climate scientists almost unanimously criticized the result as insufficient.
In August 2020, Scholz held a phone call with US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, discussing a lift of US sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, one of 23 gas pipelines between Europe and Russia. In exchange, Scholz offered €1B in subsidies to liquid gas terminals in northern Germany for US liquid gas imports. The move sparked controversy with regards to the SPD's stance towards renewable energy.
The revised Climate Protection Act introduced by Olaf Scholz's cabinet as Mayor of Hamburg provides for a 65% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030, an 88% reduction by 2040 and climate neutrality by 2045.
Scholz has advocated for the expansion of renewable energy capacities to replace fossil fuels. In May 2021, Scholz proposed the establishment of an international climate club, which should serve to develop common minimum standards for climate policy measures and a coordinated approach. In addition, uniform rules for the carbon accounting of goods should apply among members.
As part of the coalition agreement that led to Scholz becoming chancellor, the Social Democrats, Free Democrats, and Green party agreed to accelerate Germany's phaseout of coal to the year 2030, in line with the target set by the Powering Past Coal Alliance. The country's previous target had been to end the use of coal by 2038. In addition, the agreement set a phaseout of power generation from natural gas by 2040. The agreement also included provisions for the prohibition on natural gas heating in new buildings and the replacement of natural gas systems in existing buildings. An end to the sale of combustion vehicles would come in 2035, in line with the target set by the European Commission.
Foreign policy
In January 2019, Scholz stated that he sees China primarily as an economic partner. He tried to persuade Chinese Vice Premier Liu He that China should be more open to German firms, and he supported the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment between the EU and China. In September 2022, he condemned the treatment of ethnic Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang.
In December 2019, Scholz criticized US sanctions on Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany, saying: "Such sanctions are a serious interference in the internal affairs of Germany and Europe and their sovereignty." Scholz has expressed support for a longstanding agreement that allows American tactical nuclear weapons to be stored and maintained on American bases within Germany.
In October 2019, Scholz condemned the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish-controlled northeastern areas of Syria, otherwise known as Rojava.
In December 2024, Scholz welcomed the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, describing the situation as "good news".
Other activities
International organizations
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), ex officio member of the board of governors (2018–2021)
European Investment Bank (EIB), ex officio member of the board of governors (2018–2021)
European Stability Mechanism, member of the board of governors (2018–2021)
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), ex officio member of the board of governors (2018–2021)
International Monetary Fund (IMF), ex officio alternate member of the board of governors (2018–2021)
Corporate boards
KfW, ex-officio member of the Board of Supervisory Directors (2018–2021)
RAG-Stiftung, ex-officio member of the board of trustees (2018–2021)
HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, ex officio chairman of the supervisory board (−2018)
Non-profits
Lebendige Stadt Foundation , member of the board of trustees (2009–2021)
Deutsche Nationalstiftung , member of the Senate
Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), member
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), chairman of the Task Force on International Aviation Policy
Personal life
Olaf Scholz is married to fellow SPD politician Britta Ernst. The couple lived in Hamburg's Altona district before moving to Potsdam in 2018.
Scholz was raised in the Protestant Church in Germany but later left it. At his inauguration as chancellor in 2021, he took the oath of office without a reference to God (the second chancellor to do so after Gerhard Schröder). He is the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany who is not a member of a church.
Scholz bears a striking resemblance to Chris Coons, an American politician who serves as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, which the two referenced when posing for a selfie together in February 2024 with the caption "Wer ist wer" (German for "who is who").
In September 2023, Scholz was seen wearing an eye patch in a Twitter post following a jogging accident in his hometown. He said the injury "looks worse than it is". Becoming known as the Scholz eye patch, this visual accessory would go on to positively influence his public reputation in Germany.