Germany’s highest court has backed government plans to reduce the size of the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, by 103 seats.
The ruling ends a lengthy stand-off between Berlin and the constitutional court in Karlsruhe. On Tuesday the court backed an electoral law reform that fixes the maximum number of Bundestag seats at 630.
Previously the ceiling was 598 seats but provisions in electoral law saw that number swell to 736 seats in the current parliament. That is 16 more than the European Parliament, representing the entire EU, and second only in size to the National People’s Congress in China, with 2,980 delegates.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition welcomed Tuesday’s confirmation, saying it would save about €310 million per legislative period and improve parliamentary procedures.
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But Karlsruhe judges struck down part of the reformed electoral law that favours smaller parties, such as the post-communist Left Party and Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU).
Judges said that candidates elected directly as part of Germany’s two-vote system must be guaranteed their seat – even if the party fails to clear the 5 per cent hurdle for parliamentary representation.
However the constitutional court ruling agreed with the broader part of the Scholz coalition reform, dropping the so-called surplus mandate system. This allowed a party secure additional seats if its share of direct mandates, the second vote, exceeded its total national share of the ballot from the first vote. These additional seats, in turn, granted parties more seats to maintain parliamentary proportions matching the election result.
Bavaria’s CSU, sister party of the national Christian Democratic Union (CDU), filed a constitutional challenge but was only partially successful – with likely consequences for next year’s federal election expected on September 25th.
It secured 45 direct mandates in the 2021 election. Based on its 5.2 per cent of the national share of the vote, however, this was 11 seats more than its actual entitlement.
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