KARLSRUHE (GERMANY), July 30 (DPA/EP) –
Germany’s Constitutional Court has declared the electoral reform proposed by Olaf Scholz’s government to reduce the number of deputies in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, from 736 to 630, partially unconstitutional.
The Bundestag, considered the largest freely elected legislative assembly in the world, is formed on the basis of a complex voting system that allows for an increase in the number of representatives depending on the outcome of the election.
Germans cast two votes in federal parliamentary elections: one direct vote for a regional candidate and a second for a party list, which determines the party’s relative presence in parliament.
The reform, promoted by Scholz – who was brought into government by a coalition of Socialists, Greens and Liberals – proposes eliminating a clause that allows smaller parties to enter parliament with regional candidates even if they do not obtain the necessary five percent of votes at national level.
However, the Constitutional Court has rejected this aspect of the reform, which was introduced in June 2023 and would have come into force for the first time in the next German parliamentary elections in September 2025.
The conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party in Bavaria announced in March last year that it would appeal the reform to the Constitutional Court, considering it “an attack on democracy and federalism.”
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