History of Germany since 1990 Helmut Kohl was reelected as Chancellor for his fifth and last term. The ruling liberal-conservative coalition government, consisting of the CDU/CSU and the FDP, lost the German federal election, 1998, and Gerhard Schröder was elected as Chancellor, the head of a coalition government consisting of his own SPD party and The Greens. Joschka Fischer, a leading Green politician, became Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Shortly after the formation of the government, Minister of Finance Oskar Lafontaine, a former SPD chairman and rival of Schröder, resigned from the cabinet. He was succeeded as Minister of Finance by Hans Eichel. In 1998,
Chancellor of Germany (1949–present) Walter Scheel was appointed as Acting Chancellor and served for nine days until the election of Helmut Schmidt on 16 May 1974. The 18th and current Vice Chancellor of Germany is Olaf Scholz, who also serves as Federal Minister of Finance in the Fourth Merkel cabinet. Unlike in other parliamentary legislatures, the "Bundestag" or "Federal Diet" (lower house of the German Federal Parliament) cannot remove the chancellor with a traditional motion of no confidence. Instead, the removal of a chancellor is only possible if a majority of the "Bundestag" members agree on a successor, who is then immediately sworn in