Thanks to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's decision to ask the German Bundestag (Federal Parliament) for a vote of confidence on 1 July 2005, and following on the Federal President's dissolution of the Parliament on 21 July 2005 in response thereto, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – Federal Constitutional Court) was pressed into service to finally decide whether federal elections should go forward nearly a year ahead of schedule. With the Court's affirmative decision of 25 August 2005, Germany now finds itself in a turbulent national election campaign.