Traffic light wants to shrink the Bundestag again - Greens explains how it should work

Created: 12/25/2021, 10:16 PM

The Greens Annalena Baerbock (left), Robert Habeck and Britta Haßelmann confer in the Bundestag.

© Chris Emil Janssen / www.imago-images.de

The GroKo had a hard time for years - the traffic light now wants to quickly renew the right to vote.

The Greens already have a plan for a smaller Bundestag.

Berlin - The GroKo argued for a long time - and finally found a compromise that angered not only the opposition, but also experts: Olaf Scholz's traffic light coalition * now wants to do better on the issue of electoral reform.

Britta Haßelmann, head of the Greens * parliamentary group, gave a first look at the plans over Christmas.

She also mentioned the preferred lever to downsize the Bundestag after a long period of growth.

Greens explain plans for electoral reform - Bundestag should be smaller again

According to his own statements, Haßelmann firmly assumes that the traffic light will succeed in reforming the electoral law by the end of 2022. "The aim is to significantly reduce the size of the Bundestag and to approach the target size of 598 seats," she told the AFP news agency. This is "absolutely necessary for the acceptance of parliamentary democracy and for the ability of the Bundestag to work," she emphasized. "We are now with 736 members * and it cannot go on like this."

According to Haßelmann, discussions within the coalition on electoral reform are to start in January.

As soon as the traffic light parties have agreed on a draft law, they would also approach the other democratic groups.

Although a reform can be passed with a simple majority in the Bundestag, the aim is always to achieve the broadest possible consensus in electoral law reforms - even if the grand coalition recently deviated from this principle.

Haßelmann demanded that the Bundestag should be effectively downsized in the direction of the statutory standard.

They and the traffic light rule out a trick of the GroKo faction from the last attempt at reform: "We reject a distortion of the distribution of seats due to unbalanced overhang mandates," says the contract between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP.

Green Haßelmann raises allegations against the Union and the SPD - important principle ignored in reform?

The basis for the reform sought by the Ampel coalition is "personalized proportional representation," said Haßelmann.

“The principle of 'every vote must be worth the same' must not lose its validity.” That was not the case with the electoral reform of the CDU / CSU and SPD in the last legislative period;

Overhang mandates were no longer fully balanced.

"That urgently needs to be changed," stressed Haßelmann.

According to the Greens, reducing the number of constituencies is the “most stable and resilient instrument” for downsizing the Bundestag.

Haßelmann pointed out that her party had helped draft a corresponding bill in the previous legislative period *.

"But we will of course now explore together within the traffic lights which possibilities can lead to this goal."

The Greens, the Left Party and the FDP jointly proposed in 2019 that the number of constituencies should be reduced to 250 for the previous federal election, which would have significantly reduced the likelihood of overhang and compensation mandates.

However, the opposition at the time did not prevail; instead, the law presented by the GroKo was passed.

Traffic light reform for voting rights should come - very soon, according to the Greens

In Germany, personalized proportional representation applies.

Half of the 598 MPs are elected with the first vote in 299 constituencies.

With the second vote, the state list of a party is elected - this vote decides on the distribution of the seats according to the principle of proportional representation.

Smaller parties also have a chance of entering parliament.

Surplus mandates arise when a party in a federal state wins more direct mandates than it is entitled to after the second votes.

In order to avoid distorting the election results, the other parties receive compensation mandates.

However, there were exceptions to this rule in the GroKo's most recent reform of the electoral law.

The downsizing of parliament should "not be postponed again to the never-ending day", demanded Haßelmann.

“That is why we have set ourselves this tight time frame.” The goal is to pass a resolution within one year.

Haßelmann was "very happy" about the definition in the coalition agreement.

According to this, the traffic light parties want to “revise the electoral law within the first year in order to prevent the Bundestag from growing in the long term”.

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