German court upholds plan to shrink parliament

Germany’s highest court on Tuesday largely approved plans to shrink the country’s parliament, despite objections from smaller parties who say the reform is unfair to them.

The conservative CSU and far-left Die Linke had appealed to the constitutional court in Karlsruhe about the changes, passed by the Bundestag lower house in March 2023.

But in its ruling on Tuesday, the court approved the main part of the reform, which will slash the number of seats in parliament to 630 at the next election from 733 now.

The German parliament has expanded in recent years because of a complex voting system which awards seats to the winners of constituency votes, as well as according to each party’s nationwide vote share.

The new rules will abolish extra seats awarded when a party earns more direct mandates than it is entitled to based on its share of the vote.
The change will mean some candidates could miss out on a seat in parliament despite being directly elected in their constituency.

The government had also wanted to abolish a rule that means a party can still be represented in parliament even if it wins less than five percent of the vote, as long as it gets at least three constituency seats.
However, the court on Tuesday ruled that part of the reform was unconstitutional.

It said the change would unfairly affect the CSU, the smaller sister party of the conservative CDU, since it only fields candidates in the state of Bavaria.

The change would have left the party with no seats in parliament if it had sunk under the five percent mark, instead of its current 43.
In Germany’s last election, the CSU received 5.2 percent of the vote overall.

Members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party governing coalition hailed the judgement as a success, despite the partial slapdown.

The court had “confirmed the core of the electoral reform”, said Konstantin Kuhle, deputy leader of the liberal FDP’s parliamentary group.
Dirk Wiese, deputy leader of the parliamentary group for Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), said the ruling meant the reform was “complete and constitutional”.