The power he actually held
Olaf Scholz was federal chancellor from 8 December 2021 to 6 May 2025. The Basic Law gives the chancellor Richtlinienkompetenz. It does not give him a personal army, a personal climate fund, or a personal Union regulation. After 6 November 2024 he did not even have a coalition.
That limit is the first fact. The second is that guideline power still moves welfare. A chancellor who writes a 100 billion euro defence fund into the constitution, licenses floating LNG terminals, and delays Leopard tanks is not a narrator. The live score has to read those instruments as enacted.
What went wrong, and what is proven
The sharpest official check is the Federal Constitutional Court judgment of 15 November 2023. The court held that leftover COVID credit could not be shifted into a climate-and-transformation fund. The traffic-light climate programme lost a 60 billion euro off-budget plank. That is not an NGO talking point. It is a constitutional judgment about public-debt sustainability and about honesty in emergency credits.
Weapons policy has a dated hesitation. In 2022 Germany first sent light equipment, then Marders, then Leopards, under allied pressure and after Volodymyr Zelenskyy had asked in public.
The Gebäudeenergiegesetz of 2023, associated with Habeck but owned by the coalition, produced a political shock over boiler replacement. Farmer protests in 2024 added a rural cost-of-living fight after subsidy cuts. The 6 November 2024 sacking of Lindner ended the coalition. Polarization and legislative capacity both moved.
Two finance-ministry files follow him into the chancellery reading. The Wirecard collapse happened on his BaFin watch. The Hamburg Cum-Ex affair concerns tax recovery from Warburg-Bank while he was mayor, later probed when he was finance minister. Neither is a conviction of Scholz. Both are official inquiry material on institutional-corruption.
The 15 April 2023 nuclear shutdown closed the last three plants after a wartime extension. It is a completed energy act. It weakens nuclear-energy deployment and, in a gas-crisis winter, had a security cost beside any waste-risk gain.
What improved, and how far
The Zeitenwende speech of 27 February 2022 and the special defence fund are the core positive security instruments. One is a speech. The other is a Basic Law amendment and a 100 billion euro appropriation. Treating the speech as completed rearmament would be padding. Treating the fund as a slogan would be the opposite error.
The LNG Acceleration Act and the price brakes are crisis statutes. They weaken energy-price volatility and cost-of-living pressure. They also lock in fossil-fuel infrastructure. Mixed effects are split, not averaged.
Bürgergeld replaced Hartz IV. The minimum-wage rise to 12 euros is a 2022 labour statute. Temporary protection and Ukraine candidate status are Council files he joined.
Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron are counterparts, not ghosts. Baerbock ran the foreign office. Habeck ran the economics ministry. Lindner ran the veto. The chancellor still set the guideline.
Shared responsibility, and what the score does not say
The score does not say that Scholz stole Cum-Ex money. It does not say that the Bundeswehr is now equipped. It does not say that LNG terminals are a climate policy. It does not convert a speech into a tank. Confidence is high on Karlsruhe and on the special-fund amendment, and medium where procurement, coalition arithmetic, and member-state discretion sit between the chancellery and a welfare indicator.
