Enlarge image
Plenary hall in the German Bundestag
Photo: Kira Hofmann / dpa
The grand coalition wants to set up the commission for electoral reform in the Bundestag next week.
The Union and the SPD have agreed on this, and SPIEGEL has submitted a joint motion from the parliamentary groups.
The working group was included in the compromise with the Union at the insistence of the SPD.
The reason for the reform was that because of the peculiarities of the right to vote, there are many more MPs in the Bundestag than is normally intended and that a further increase in the number of MPs is likely.
The FDP and the Greens recently criticized the fact that the commission had still not been set up and that the reform had "absolutely failed".
Carsten Schneider, First Parliamentary Managing Director of the SPD parliamentary group, defended the project.
"The commission is also an offer to the opposition to find their way back to a broader consensus," said Schneider.
What it is about: At the end of August 2020, the coalition agreed in a laborious compromise to reform electoral law in two steps.
In the first stage for the federal election on September 26, only minor changes were made.
So it remains at the number of 299 constituencies.
Overhang mandates from a party are to be partially offset against their list mandates.
If the standard size of the Bundestag of 598 seats is exceeded, up to three overhang seats should not be compensated for by compensation seats.
Experts doubt that it will be possible to downsize Parliament in this way.
For the second, larger level, there is the commission.
This should submit an interim report with suggestions by September 30th.
A final report is to follow by June 2023.
The most important points at a glance:
The commission should consist of
18 members
.
The CDU and CSU are to send three, the SPD two MPs and the other parliamentary groups one each.
In addition, nine experts will be part of the commission.
The topic should not only be the size of the Bundestag, but also the lowering of the
voting age to 16 years
and the »promotion of
equal representation
of women and men«.
The commission should also deal with the length of the legislative period, the
limitation of the terms
of office of the chancellor and the bundling of election dates.
Another focus should be the
modernization of parliamentary work
.
It is about how the work of the Bundestag "can be made more transparent and more efficient using the possibilities of digitization".
The commission should be able to meet in public if the commission so decides.
Public meetings
can be streamed live on the Internet.
The motion no longer mentions an originally planned citizens' council advising the Commission.
Instead, it simply says: "An adequate participation of citizens in the work of the Commission must be ensured."
From SPD circles it is said that the Union has refused to commit to the procedure of citizen participation.
But one still expects the citizens' council to come.
cte
