Giant Bundestag: Traffic light plans advance - Union and left have major concerns
Created: 06/07/2022, 18:11
By: Bedrettin Bölükbasi
The Bundestag needed many additional seats after the 2021 election. The traffic light government now wants to change that.
(Archive image) © imago-images
After the 2021 election, the Bundestag grew to 736 MPs.
The traffic light coalition wants to change this.
However, your project has met with criticism from the Union and the left.
Munich — After the 2021 federal election, the German Bundestag grew to a record size of 736 MPs.
The only triggers were 11 overhang mandates from the CSU in Bavaria.
Since eight of these CSU mandates in the Bundestag had to be balanced under the electoral law passed in October 2020, all other parties together received a total of 127 equalization mandates.
The result: 736 seats in Parliament.
The traffic light coalition now wants to put an end to this with an electoral law reform.
The coalition wants to shrink the Bundestag to its standard size of 598 MPs.
However, this requires an intervention in the overhang and equalization mandates.
Both this and the approach of the traffic light are met with criticism from the opposition.
Apparently not everyone in the SPD agrees.
Electoral law reform: Traffic lights want to bring the Bundestag to the standard size - Merz criticizes the coalition
In order to bring the Bundestag back to its intended size, overhang mandates and compensation mandates should be eliminated according to the presentation of the traffic light coalition.
Since each party then only gets as many direct mandates in a federal state as it is entitled to based on the result of the second vote, it can happen that a constituency winner does not get into parliament.
CDU party leader and Union faction leader Friedrich Merz was skeptical about the reform proposed by the traffic light.
The concept is "not compatible with the Basic Law," said Merz in Berlin.
This regulation is "not compatible with our view of the legitimacy of constituency mandates," Merz emphasized.
He also criticized the fact that the traffic light groups had not first tried to work out a joint proposal with the opposition: "We regret that this consensus is not being sought."
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Electoral law reform: Dobrindt sees “election fraud with announcement” – leftists have “constitutional concerns”
CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt was also "seriously surprised" at the actions of the traffic light groups.
In terms of content, their proposal borders “on electoral fraud with announcement” because it means that directly elected members of parliament are denied entry into the Bundestag.
This undermines the “democratic foundations” of the election.
Should the traffic light proposal become law, "we will immediately file a constitutional complaint against it," announced Dobrindt.
Left faction leader Amira Mohamed Ali has "constitutional concerns," as she said in Berlin.
The coalition's proposal leads to a "de facto devaluation of votes".
Mohamed Ali also criticized the fact that the opposition factions had not been involved in the reform plans.
Electoral reform: Traffic light defends Bundestag initiative - but SPD East probably against the plan
The traffic light coalition, however, defended itself against objections.
SPD faction deputy Matthias Miersch stated that the traffic light proposal was "an open invitation".
It cannot be ruled out that "we will end up with a model that several people then say we will join in on".
The domestic policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Sebastian Hartmann, spoke to the
editorial network Germany (RND)
of a "long overdue reform" and a "minimally invasive intervention".
He does not share constitutional concerns.
"The system of proportional representation will remain," he said.
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The voices from the Greens and the FDP are similar.
Green parliamentary group leader Britta Haßelmann told the
RND
that it was a "fair, constitutional and balanced reform of the electoral law" that would effectively reduce the size of the Bundestag.
The domestic policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Konstantin Kuhle, also contradicted legal objections: "It should very well correspond to the spirit of the Basic Law that a party receives exactly as many seats as the election results correspond to."
Nevertheless, there is now resistance within the coalition.
The SPD regional group East defends itself against the plan, as the
image
reported.
Accordingly, a third of the SPD parliamentary group is against the project.
After all, the reform will also have an impact on the Social Democrats.
According to
image
information, four SPD mandates could be lost in Brandenburg alone.
Electoral law reform of the traffic light should shrink the size of the Bundestag - why 736 MPs?
The fixed standard size of the Bundestag is actually 598 MPs.
However, the Bundestag has grown continuously with every election since 2005.
This is due to overhang and compensation mandates.
The overhang mandates arise when a party brings all of its victorious direct candidates into parliament, but its share of second votes is actually not sufficient for this.
This was exactly the case for the CSU in the last federal election.
The party received 45 direct mandates, although its nationwide share of second votes of 5.2 percent was actually enough for only 34 MPs.
The CSU thus won 11 overhang mandates, which had to be compensated for in the Bundestag due to the principle of proportional representation.
According to this, the ratio of seats in Parliament should correspond to the ratio of second votes.
According to the voting rights agreed in October 2020, up to three overhang mandates do not have to be compensated.
The remaining eight mandates of the CSU, however, already.
Eight overhang mandates had a huge impact on the size of the Bundestag.
The remaining parties together received 127 additional seats.
The CDU 30, the SPD 36, the AfD 14, the FDP 16, the Linke 7 and the Greens 24. Together with the original 598 deputies and the 11 CSU overhang mandates, you end up with a total of 736 deputies.
If all 11 mandates had to be balanced, the Bundestag would have been even larger.
(bb with dpa)
