Germany set to shrink its XXL parliament

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and Free Democrats (FDP)presented a bill this week that is supposed to achieve what has not been possible for years: reducing the size of the upper house of parliament, the Bundestag.

Germany’s federal parliament has attracted international attention because, with its 736 members, it is larger than any other democratically elected parliament. Only the Chinese National People’s Congress and the unelected House of Lords in the UK are larger. This is due to a complicated system of so-called “overhang” and “leveling” mandates.

German voters get two votes in their federal elections: One for the deputy representing their constituency, and one for their preferred party. This means the parties in the Bundestag are represented by both directly-elected parliamentarians and those taken from party “lists.”

The second vote determines the size of a party in the Bundestag. But each directly elected representative is entitled to a seat in parliament.

How do German elections work?

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Overhang mandates

This means parties get “overhang mandates” if they win more constituencies than the number of seats they are entitled to according to the proportion of their national vote. Leveling mandates are then granted to other parties to compensate them for their rivals’ additional overhang mandates — to ensure they get a proportion close to what their election result dictates.

Thanks in part to the recent rise of smaller parties and the decline in support for the big ones in all constituencies, this system has meant the parliament has swelled from a minimum of 598 seats to its current 736.

According to a survey by the Allensbach institute, 78% of Germans think the parliament is too big. Many think it is also too expensive: The 2023 federal budget earmarked around €1.4 billion ($1.52 billion), including all ancillary costs, for the Bundestag.

The FDP’s Konstantin Kuhle, a member of the commission tasked with making proposals to change the electoral law, thinks slimming the parliament is an important signal in itself: “In times of crisis, inflation, and high energy prices, citizens rightly expect politicians to tighten their belts, too.”

Abolish overhang and leveling mandates

The government’s plan is to simply get rid of overhang and leveling seats altogether, which could mean that directly elected representatives in a constituency would not automatically get a seat in parliament.

Sebastian Hartmann, an SPD representative on the reform commission, said, “We don’t want a reform, we want to tackle electoral law fundamentally,” while Till Steffen of the Green Party says the reform has been “boycotted” by some politicians too often so far. This time, “we have to get electoral law reform right.”

For more than a decade there have been attempts to shrink the parliament, but they have all failed, partly because the parliament can only decide to reduce its size itself. “All parties see the need for downsizing, but at the same time they are scrupulously careful not to be disadvantaged if there is a reform,” Klaus Stüwe, chair of comparative politics at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, told DW.

That’s why the conservative opposition swiftly condemned the government plans at the beginning of the week: The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavaria-only sister, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said the proposal was unacceptable.

CSU General Secretary Martin Huber even described it as “electoral fraud” to block directly elected representatives from entering parliament. This would be the action of a “rogue state,” he said.

Constitutional Court to rule

The remarks continued the political routine of the last few years: Accusations and counter-accusations amounting to an overall unwillingness to reform, especially among the CSU, which has benefited from the current arrangement. If the coalition’s reform law were already applied, Stüwe calculated the CSU would have eleven fewer mandates. “So it’s understandable that the CSU doesn’t agree with the plans.”

And yet, by the end of the week, even the CDU/CSU signaled some willingness to move. According to a Süddeutsche Zeitung report, the conservatives suggested reducing the number of constituencies from the current 299 to 270 and then not compensating a certain number (up to 15) of overhang mandates.

The government only needs a simple majority in the Bundestag, which it has, to push through its plans. They want to put their draft to a Bundestag vote before Easter. But the CDU/CSU could “will do everything they can to prevent it — up to and including going to Karlsruhe,” according to Stüve, referring to the seat of the Federal Constitutional Court.

The FDP’s Kuhle is unfazed by this prospect. He says that the coalition is confident that its proposal is constitutionally sound: “I see it calmly.” But the wrangling over shrinking Germany’s XXL Bundestag is not over yet.

This article was originally written in German.

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Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-set-to-shrink-its-xxl-parliament/a-64471203?maca=en-rss-en-ger-1023-xml-atom