No sooner has the 20th German Bundestag started work than it is important that the 21st does not become even bigger than the current one.

In their coalition agreement, the SPD, Greens and FDP have agreed to revise the electoral law “within the first year” of the legislative period in order to “sustainably” prevent further growth in the Bundestag.

An ambitious plan.

Especially since you want to get the Union on board.

"The goal is a broad consensus in the Bundestag," said the chairman of the FDP parliamentary group, Christian Dürr, of the FAZ. In the previous legislative period, an electoral law reform failed, mainly because of the CSU.

He therefore asks "that you give up your fundamental position of not changing anything about the shape of the constituencies".

Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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So far, however, the CSU has not made any moves to move away from its previous position. This also applies to Michael Frieser, who directly won the Nuremberg-South constituency in September. Frieser does not see the enlargement of the Bundestag from 709 to 736 members as dramatic. Calculations before the election that it could happen that 900 or more parliamentarians would have to jostle under the dome of the Reichstag have been refuted. He also attributes this to the step taken by the grand coalition, after all, not to compensate for three overhang mandates. In addition, there is already a draft law that would reduce the number of constituencies from 299 to 20. With an election result like the one in September, you would get 680 deputies, Frieser calculates in an interview with the FAZ. It doesn't sound likeas if the CSU wanted to move excessively.

However, the situation has changed. In the current Bundestag, an electoral law reform can also be decided without the consent of the Union and therefore against its will, with a simple majority of the traffic lights. Two of the three traffic light partners – the Greens and the FDP – had presented an opposition motion together with the Left Party in the previous electoral period, which aimed at a total of 250 constituencies. Since the CSU, in particular, wins the constituencies directly in Bavaria, it has no interest in reducing their number, certainly not beyond the 20 in the room. FDP parliamentary group leader Dürr is now reminding of the “consulting basis”, which already exists, i.e. the aforementioned initiative by the three parties. His goal is to shrink the Bundestag to the originally planned size, i.e. to around 600 members.

The reform planned by the traffic light is not the first attempt of this kind, on the contrary.

In the previous legislative period, Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) tried hard to find a solution, to his disappointment only a very small one came out.

The traffic light coalition agreement states that the “Commission to reform federal electoral law and modernize parliamentary work” will be reinstated.

That's pending.

In general, the concrete work on the next attempt has not started.

But at the traffic light you are resolute.

The reform of the electoral law has "very high priority," said the parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group Katja Mast of the "Rheinische Post".

The Greens parliamentary group leader, Britta Haßelmann, had recently threatened that the reform could also be passed without the CSU.