The injection will remain optional, much to the Chancellor's dismay.
This Thursday, the deputies spoke out against the bill aimed at obliging Germans over 60 to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and thus bury the vaccination obligation repeatedly revived by Olaf Scholz, the successor of Angela Merkel.
The compulsory vaccination project, a promise of the German Chancellor bogged down for several months, obtained 296 votes in favor, but was rejected by 378 deputies.
Nine members of the lower house of the German parliament abstained.
The snub is significant for the successor of Angela Merkel, who spoke out in the fall for compulsory vaccination for all adults, promised for "end of February or beginning of March".
The new social-democratic chancellor was unable to bring behind him all of the three parties in his own government coalition, bringing together social-democrats, ecologists and liberals, nor the conservative opposition.
A strong movement against vaccines
The subject is thorny in a Germany where the anti-vaccine movement is strongly mobilized.
The liberals of the FDP in particular have held back for months on the idea of a vaccination obligation.
Despite a bill ultimately partially emptied of its substance, with an obligation reserved only for those over 60, the government was unable to unite around its proposed majority in the Bundestag.
The Chancellor, criticized in recent months for his discretion and lack of leadership, even drew sarcasm on Thursday by forcing his head of diplomacy, Annalena Baerbock, to leave a NATO meeting in Brussels on Ukraine to come and take part in the vote, several media reported.
The health situation remains degraded in Germany, which has recorded more than 200,000 new cases of Covid-19 every 24 hours in recent days.
The seven-day incidence rate exceeds 1,200. Some 76% of the population have received two doses of the vaccine.
Only 58.9% of Germans have received a booster dose against Covid-19, according to the Robert Koch Institute, the German health authority.