Brussels, 25/08/2005 (Agence Europe) - German general elections, which have been brought forward, could take place on 18 September. As expected, the German constitutional court decided on 25 August to give the go-ahead to holding early elections as desired by Chancellor Schroder, by rejecting by 7 to 1 the appeal by a parliamentarian of the Social Democratic Party and a parliamentarian of the Greens against the dissolution of the Bundestag announced by President Horst Kohler on 23 July this year. On 21 July, Chancellor Schroder asked for a vote of confidence at the Bundestag, but was rejected (as he expected). Parliamentarians Schulz and Hoffmann claim that Gerhard Schroder abused Article 68 of the fundamental law giving the German Chancellor the right to ask for parliament's confidence - so that he could call early elections - if he believes he does not have a big enough majority in parliament to be able to govern (the Red-Green coalition still holds the majority in the Bundestag, but not in the Bundesrat, Ed.).
The latest polls suggest the CDU-CSU would get 42% of the votes, the SPD 30%, the Greens and the FDP liberals around 7% and the new left Linkspartei/WASG around 10%. But according to calculations in the Financial Times Deutschland on 25 August, the FDP has overtaken the Greens, while Oskar Lafontaine and Georg Gysi's party is falling in popularity.