German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has lost a vote of confidence in parliament, paving the way for early elections in February.
Mr Scholz leads a minority government after his unpopular and notoriously rancorous three-party coalition collapsed on November 6 when he fired his finance minister in a dispute over how to revitalise Germany's stagnant economy.
Leaders of several major parties already agreed that a parliamentary election should be held on February 23, seven months earlier than originally planned.
The confidence vote was needed because post-Second World Germany's constitution does not allow the Bundestag to dissolve itself.
Mr Scholz won the support of 207 MPs in the 733-seat lower house, or Bundestag, while 394 voted against him and 116 abstained in the poll.
That left him far short of the majority of 367 needed to win.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is now expected to dissolve parliament and call an election.
He has 21 days to make that decision and, because of the planned timing of the election, is expected to do so after Christmas.
Once parliament is dissolved, the election must be held within 60 days.
The debate preceding the vote also opened serious campaigning for the election, with party leaders trading ill-tempered barbs.
The chancellor and his conservative challenger Friedrich Merz, who surveys suggest is likely to replace him, charged each other with incompetence and lack of vision. Scholz, who will head a caretaker government until a new one can be formed, defended his record as a crisis leader who had dealt with the economic and security emergency triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
If given a second term, he said, he would invest heavily in Germany's creaking infrastructure rather than making the spending cuts he said the conservatives wanted.
"Shortsightedness might save money in the short term, but the mortgage on our future is unaffordable," said Scholz, who served four years as finance minister under a previous coalition with the conservatives before becoming chancellor in 2021.
Merz told Scholz his spending plans would burden future generations and accused him of failing to deliver on promises of rearmament after the start of the Ukraine war.
"Taking on debt at the cost of the young generation, spending money - and you didn't say the word 'competitiveness' once," said Merz.
Neither mentioned the constitutional spending cap, a measure designed to ensure fiscal responsibility that many economists blame for the fraying state of Germany's infrastructure.
The conservatives have a comfortable, albeit narrowing lead of more than 10 points over the SPD in most polls. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is slightly ahead of Scholz's party, while the Greens are in fourth place.
The mainstream parties have refused to govern with the AfD, but its presence complicates the parliamentary arithmetic, making unwieldy coalitions more likely. Scholz has outlined a list of measures that could pass with opposition support before the election, including 11 billion euros ($11 billion) in tax cuts and an increase in child benefits already agreed on by former coalition partners.
The conservatives have also hinted they could back measures to better protect the Constitutional Court from the machinations of a future populist or anti-democratic government and to extend a popular subsidised transport ticket. Measures to ease unintended burdens on taxpayers look less certain, while Merz rejected a Green proposal to cut energy prices, saying he wanted a totally new energy policy.
Robert Habeck, the Greens' chancellor candidate, said that was a worrying sign for German democracy, given the growing likelihood in a fractured political landscape that very different parties would again have to govern together.
"It's very unlikely the next government will have it easier," Habeck said.
AfD leader Alice Weidel called for all Syrian refugees in Germany to be sent back following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
