At the beginning of the last week of the election campaign, the heads of the competing parties separated themselves from one another with new mutual accusations.

Above all, the questioning of the SPD chancellor candidate, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, in a special meeting of the Bundestag Finance Committee provided the occasion.

The subject of the questioning was a public prosecutor's search in the Ministry of Finance a week ago.

The Union's candidate for chancellor, the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Armin Laschet, assessed Scholz's statements in the committee as inadequate: "Transparency is something else." The SPD, in turn, accused Laschet of scandalizing the matter.

Helene Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Peter Carstens

Political correspondent in Berlin

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Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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The Social Democrats are starting the last week of the election campaign with confidence.

This was also reflected in the SPD presidium meeting on Monday.

For many years, the committee meetings in Berlin's Willy-Brandt-Haus were seen as a refuge in a bad mood.

On Monday, party chairman Norbert Walter-Borjans reported that the meeting, “as you can imagine, was nice.

We are betting on victory. ”The hope of the competition to put Scholz in a bad light in the last TV triall on Sunday evening has not been fulfilled from the perspective of the Social Democrats.

According to the verdict of the SPD leadership, Laschet was “absolutely overwhelmed” with his candidacy.

SPD candidate Scholz, on the other hand, recently found himself in distress due to failures in the Wirecard scandal and criminal cum-ex deals, surprised the opposition on Monday morning with his personal appearance before the finance committee.

Scholz had originally only wanted to attend the confrontation digitally, via video switch.

But at the latest when it became known that the Union and the opposition could summon the minister and thus humiliate him, Scholz went on the offensive and came in person.

Walter-Borjans called this “absolutely honorable” and a sign of respect - the favorite word of the SPD campaign - in front of parliament.

The party leader said it was obviously about "Laschet's last straw".

The Union has "obviously no content and seeks to scandalize the other".

Don't rest on surveys

The SPD asserts that it does not want to rest on good polls in the last few days, they are too shaky for that. You are now striving for the chancellorship of Olaf Scholz, explained the co-chairwoman Saskia Esken, questions about coalitions would be answered after the election evening. The statements of the Green candidate Annalena Baerbock that she would prefer to form a coalition with the SPD gave rise to optimism, but the word “prefer” is not yet an exclusion of a black-green-yellow coalition, said Esken. "We have already said what we think about the Union's ability to govern."