TheBundestag (German:[ˈbʊndəstaːk]ⓘ, "FederalDiet") is theGermanfederal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag was established by Title III[c] of theBasic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz) in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany, the other being theBundesrat. It is thus the historical successor to the earlierReichstag.
The members of the Bundestag are representatives of the German people as a whole, are not bound by any orders or instructions and are only accountable to their conscience.[d] As of the current21st legislative period, the Bundestag has a fixed number of 630 members.
Together with theBundesrat, the Bundestag forms the legislative branch of government on federal level. The Bundestag is considerably more powerful than the Bundesrat, which represents the state governments. All bills must first be passed in the Bundestag before they are discussed in the Bundesrat. The Bundesrat can only accept laws passed by the Bundestag without amendment. Only in some areas, where laws directly affect the states, can the Bundesrat reject laws; otherwise, it can only lodge an objection to them, which the Bundestag can overrule. Above all, however, theChancellor and thefederal government are solely responsible to the Bundestag. The Bundestag also has sole budgetary authority.
The Bundestag's presiding officer is thePresident of the Bundestag; he or she is deputized by the Vice Presidents of the Bundestag. Since 2025,Julia Klöckner of theCDU/CSU is the president of the Bundestag. In theprotocol order of the federation, the President of the Bundestag ranks second after the President and before the Chancellor.
TheGerman Unity Flag is a national memorial toGerman reunification that was raised on 3 October 1990; it waves in front of theReichstag building in Berlin, seat of the Bundestag.
The first body to be calledBundestag was the legislative body of theGerman Confederation, which convened inFrankfurt am Main from 1816 to 1866. At this time, Germany was not yet a federal state and this Bundestag was not a (democratic) parliament, but an assembly of envoys of the sovereign princes. During therevolution of 1848/49, the National Assembly, which met inFrankfurt am Main, was the first elected parliament to serve as a constituent assembly for a German state, which ultimately did not come to pass.
TheNorth German Confederation, founded in 1866/67, was the first German nation state with an elected parliament, theReichstag. In 1870/71, the federation was expanded to include the southern German territories and was henceforth called theGerman Empire. The Reichstag building, where the current Bundestag meets since 1999 (see below), was built in 1888. The German Empire was not yet a parliamentary democracy in the modern sense, but a constitutional monarchy with democratic elements. The Reichstag had to approve all bills, had the right to initiate legislation and, in particular, had budgetary sovereignty. However, the Chancellor and the imperial government were not responsible to parliament, but to the emperor alone. It was not until 1918, a few weeks before the end of theFirst World War, that the Reichstag was given the right, as part of aconstitutional reform, towithdraw its confidence in the Chancellor and thus force him to resign. There was also no universal suffrage for the Reichstag; only men over the age of 25 were entitled to vote.
After its defeat in the First World War, Germany became a republic and a parliamentary democracy with theWeimar Constitution of 1919. The voting age was lowered to 21 years and women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag. However, the first German democracy failed for various reasons, some of which were directly related to the Reichstag. The pure proportional representation system in elections did not produce clear majorities and the various parties were not sufficiently willing to compromise to form stable governments. This led to numerous changes of government and snap elections. In the last years of the Weimar Republic, the extreme right and extreme left parties had a destructive majority in the Reichstag, which forced the governments to rule largely by emergency decrees to bypass parliament. In 1933,Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor and through theReichstag Fire Decree, theEnabling Act of 1933 and the death of PresidentPaul von Hindenburg in 1934, gained unlimited power. After this, the Reichstag, in which only the Nazi Party was represented from November 1933 on, met only rarely, above all to extend the emergency laws on which the Nazi dictatorship was formally based. It last convened on 26 April 1942.
With theBasic Law of 1949, Germany's second democratic constitution, the Bundestag was established as the new parliament. Due to the division of Germany, the Bundestag was de facto a West German parliament until 1990. The socialist GDR in East Germany had its own parliament, the People's Chamber, which, however, did not emerge from democratic elections except for its last electoral term in 1990. BecauseWest Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Basic Law during the division, the Bundestag met inBonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former waterworks facility and finally in theBundeshaus in Bonn. In addition, owing to the city's legal status, citizens of West Berlin were unable to vote in elections to the Bundestag, and were instead represented by 22 non-voting delegates[2] chosen by theHouse of Representatives, the city's legislature.[3]
Since German reunification in 1990, the Bundestag has once again been a pan-German parliament. In 1999, the German parliament moved from Bonn to Berlin and sits once again in the Reichstag building.
The Bundestag is one of three constitutional bodies (along with the Bundesrat and the federal government) that have the right of initiative for the legislative process. In order to introduce a bill in the Bundestag, the support of a faction or of a number of MPs corresponding to at least 5% of all MPs is required. All bills (including those introduced by the Bundesrat and the government) are first voted on in the Bundestag (for bills from the Bundesrat and the government, however, an opinion must first be obtained from the other body). A bill is first discussed at first reading, then referred to one or more committees, where it can be amended; the resulting committee version then goes back to the plenary, where it is passed at second and third reading. Amendments can also be tabled at this stage. A simple majority (more yes votes than no votes and abstentions combined) is required for normal legislative proposals. In some very rare cases, the Basic Law requires the so-calledchancellor majority (majority of all members of parliament) for simple laws, for example to establish new intermediate and subordinate federal authorities. Laws amending the Basic Law require a two-thirds majority of all members of the Bundestag.
A law passed by the Bundestag is passed on to the Bundesrat. Laws that directly affect the states must be passed by the Bundesrat by majority vote (amendments to the Basic Law, again, by a two-thirds majority); all other laws are considered passed if the Bundesrat does not object to them within 14 days. An objection by the Bundesrat can be overruled by the Bundestag with a chancellor majority if the Bundesrat has not raised the objection with a two-thirds majority (in the latter case, in order to override an objection, a two-thirds majority of members present corresponding at least to the chancellor majority is necessary). In no case can the Bundesrat make amendments to a bill. If the Bundesrat rejects a bill, the matter is often referred to the so-called mediation committee, a body made up of an equal number of members of the Bundestag and Bundesrat, which attempts to negotiate whether the bill can find the approval of both chambers with certain amendments. A version amended in this way must then be passed again by a majority in both chambers in order to become law (in this case the rules of procedure of both chambers provide for an abbreviated legislative procedure).
In the final step, a law must be signed by the President of Germany (in theory, he has a right of veto, but this has only been used very rarely in the history of the Federal Republic).
Elections
The Bundestag has an elective function for a number of offices.
Chancellor
The chancellor is elected by the Bundestag and formally appointed by the president of Germany. A chancellor's election is necessary whenever the office of chancellor has fallen vacant. This is the case if a newly elected Bundestag meets for the first time, or during legislative periods, if the former chancellor died or resigned.
The chancellor's election is one of the few cases in which a vote in the Bundestag requires amajority of all elected members, not just a majority of those assembled at the time, the so-calledKanzlermehrheit ("chancellor majority"). As with other elections performed by the Bundestag, the chancellor is elected via secret ballot. The election procedure laid down in the Basic Law can be divided into three phases:[4] The process begins with thePresident of Germany proposing a candidate to the Bundestag (usually a candidate on which the majority party or the coalition parties have agreed to beforehand), who is then voted upon without debate ("1st voting phase"). If the nominee reaches the necessary "chancellor majority", the president appoint him or her and, after that, the president of the Bundestag will administer the oath of office before the assembled house. If this nominee is not elected, the right of nomination is transferred onto the Bundestag: Candidates can now be nominated for election, whereby a nomination must be supported by at least a quarter of all MPs. The Bundestag can hold any number of ballots in this manner for two weeks. To be elected, a candidate still needs a "chancellor majority" of yes-votes ("Second voting phase"). If the Bundestag is unable to elect a chancellor in these fourteen days, a final ballot is held on the very next day. Once again, candidates can be nominated by at least a quarter of all MPs. Candidates receiving a "chancellor majority" in this ballot are elected. Otherwise, it is up to the President of Germany either to appoint the candidate with the plurality of votes as Chancellor or to dissolve the Bundestag and call new elections ("Third voting phase").
Another possibility to vote a new chancellor into office is theconstructive vote of no confidence, which allows the Bundestag to replace a sitting chancellor, if it elects a new chancellor with the "chancellor-majority".
As of 2025, all chancellors of the federal republic have been (re-)elected on proposal of the President and on the first ballot with the sole exception ofHelmut Kohl, who was elected to his first term via a constructive vote of no confidence againstHelmut Schmidt.
Judges of the federal constitutional court
The Bundestag shares responsibility with the Bundesrat for electing the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court. Both chambers elect four judges to each of the court's two senates. They also elect the president and vice-president of the Federal Constitutional Court in alternating order. In the Bundestag, this requires a two-thirds majority of members present, which has equal at least a majority of all members.
Further elective functions
In addition to these central elections, the Bundestag elects the President and Vice President of the Federal Audit Office, the Commissioner for the Armed Forces, the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, the Federal Commissioner for the Victims of the SED Dictatorship, two-thirds of the members of theJoint Committee and half of the members of the Mediation Committee.
All members of the Bundestag are ex officio members of theFederal Convention, a non-permanent constitutional body whose sole task is to elect the President of Germany. As such, the Bundestag is also involved in the presidential election.
Electoral term und principle of discontination
The Bundestag within the political system of Germany
The Bundestag is elected for four years, and new elections must be held no earlier than 46 and no later than 48 months after the beginning of a given legislative session.
By way of exception, there may be an early election if the President of Germany dissolves the Bundestag. However, the President only has the right to do so in the event of a failed chancellor election or if an incumbent chancellor requests dissolution after losing a vote of confidence. The possibility of an early election is therefore much more limited than is the case in other parliamentary democracies. This restriction is intended to encourage the parliamentary groups to cooperate in difficult situations and is a lesson learned from the experience of the Weimar Republic, in which snap elections were very frequent because the parties were unable to compromise and form stable governments. In constitutional reality however, the deliberately lost vote of confidence (also known as a false vote of confidence) has established itself as a way for the chancellor to bring about new elections, de facto at his or her discretion (this has happened four times so far: 1972, 1982/83, 2005 and 2024/25).[g]
A legislative session ends in the moment, a newly elected Bundestag convenes for the first time, which must occur within 30 days after an election.[5] The principle applies that there can be no 'period without parliament'. An elected Bundestag is fully competent to act until a newly elected Bundestag convenes for its first session. Prorogations and dissolutions (in the strict sense), as known in the Westminster system, do not exist in Germany. Even an early dissolution of the Bundestag, as described above, in practice only leads to an early election, but does not end the legislative period itself. Before a constitutional amendment in 1976, the "Standing Committee" took the place of the Bundestag with all its rights after dissolution by the President or 48 months after its constitution until a new Bundestag was constituted.[6] Since then, a legislative session generally only ends when the new Bundestag convenes, meaning that lame duck sessions can occur in the four weeks following an election. This has happened four times so far:
Legislative Session
Session
Date
Reason or subject
Plenary protocoll
13th
248th
16 October 1998
Government statement by Foreign Minister Klaus KinkelResolution on participation in the air operations planned by NATO in the Kosovo conflict
15th
187th
26 September 2005
Resolution on continuation of the participation of armed German forces in the deployment of an International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan under NATO leadership
20th
213th
13 March 2025
Motion to amend the Basic Law (amendment of Art. 109 and 115 and introduction of Art. 143 h), first reading
20th
214th
18 March 2025
Motion to amend the Basic Law (amendment of Art. 109 and 115 and introduction of Art. 143 h), second and third reading
Following the tradition of German parliamentarism, the Bundestag is subject to theprinciple of discontinuation, meaning that a newly elected Bundestag is legally regarded to be a body and entity completely different from the previous Bundestag. This leads to the result that any motion, application or action submitted to the previous Bundestag, e.g. a bill referred to the Bundestag by the Federal Government, is regarded as void by non-decision (German terminology: "Die Sache fällt der Diskontinuität anheim"). Thus any bill that has not been decided upon by the beginning of the new electoral period must be brought up by the government again if it aims to uphold the motion, this procedure in effect delaying the passage of the bill. Furthermore, any newly elected Bundestag will have to freshly decide on the rules of procedure (Geschäftsordnung), which is done by a formal decision of taking over such rules from the preceding Bundestag by reference. If the succeeding Bundestag convents with same or similar majorities like its predecessor, the parliament can decide to take over earlier initiatives of legislation in the same fashion to abbreviate the process, thus effectively breaking the principle of discontinuation by a pull.
After the imperial Reichstag was elected according to a pure first-past-the-post electoral system (with run-off elections) and the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic according to a pure proportional representation system,mixed-member proportional representation, a system combiningproportional representation with elements offirst-past-the-post voting, has been used for the Bundestag since the founding of the Federal Republic. Before an electoral reform in 2023, the Bundestag nominally had 598 members, with the mixture of majority and proportional representation regularly leading to a large number of additional overhang and compensation mandates.[7] In 2023, this was remedied with a series of modifications that led to a fixed number of seats of 630 and significantly increased the proportional aspect; after this revised electoral law was confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court with some modifications following constitutional complaints, it was applied for the first time in2025.
Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected insingle-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties (Listenkandidat), first on the federal level and then on state level (Sainte-Laguë method). In most cases, the number of constituencies won by a party in a given state does not exactly correspond to the number of seats to which the party is entitled in that state via second votes. This is balanced in two different ways:
If a party wins more constituency seats in a state than its second votes would entitle it to, only the correspondent number of constituency winners with the highest percentage of first votes are elected.[h]
If a party wins fewer constituencies in a state than it is entitled to based on the second-vote result, the highest-placed candidates from the state list are elected accordingly to the additional seats.
To qualify for any seats, however, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes (basic mandate clause [de]) or exceed athreshold of 5% of the second votes nationwide. This does not apply to independent constituency candidates: these always enter the Bundestag if they win their constituency (however, no independent constituency candidate has managed to win a constituency since1949). Seats allocated in this way are subtracted from the base number of 630 when the mandates are distributed among the parties. In addition, the second votes of voters who have elected a successful independent constituency candidate are not taken into account when calculating the number of mandates (although they are for the 5% threshold).
Parties representing recognized national minorities (currentlyDanes,Frisians,Sorbs, andRomani people) are exempt from both the 5% national threshold and the basic mandate clause. The only party that has been able to benefit from this provision so far on the federal level is theSouth Schleswig Voters' Association, which represents the minorities of Danes and Frisians inSchleswig-Holstein and managed to win a seat in1949,2021, and2025.[8]
Bundestag ballot from the2005 election in theWürzburg district. The column for the constituency vote (with the name, occupation, and address of each candidate) is on the left in black print; the column for the party list vote (showing top five list candidates in the state) is on the right in blue print.
Succession in case of early retirement
If a member of parliament leaves the Bundestag during the current legislative session, either through resignation or death, another candidate from that party from the corresponding state takes their place. Successful constituency candidates who did not receive a seat in the previous election due to the principle of second vote coverage are considered first, followed by the candidates on the respective state list. However, if the list is exhausted, the seat in question remains vacant for the remainder of the session. If the departing member was an independent constituency candidate, the seat also remains empty.
Latest election result
Regular election of 2025
The latest federal election was held on Sunday, 23 February 2025, to elect the members of the 21st Bundestag.
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found onPhabricator and onMediaWiki.org.
Seat distribution in the Bundestag from 1949 to 2021
TheMarie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, one of the official buildings of the complex, housing the parliamentary library
Presidium and Council of Elders
The executive bodies of the Bundestag are thePresidium and theCouncil of Elders. The Presidium consists of the President, the presiding officer, and several Vice Presidents. The President and Vice Presidents are elected by the plenary of the Bundestag, whereby traditionally the largest fraction nominates the President and each fraction may nominate a Vice President. In addition to the members of the Presidium, the Council of Elders includes 23 other deputies who are delegated proportionally by the factions. The council is the coordination hub, determining the daily legislative agenda and assigning committee chairpersons based on Parliamentary group representation. The council also serves as an important forum for interparty negotiations on specific legislation and procedural issues. The Presidium is responsible for the routine administration of the Bundestag, including its clerical and research activities.
Legislative calender
The Bundestag cannot be adjourned or prorogued during the current legislative session, but is always fully capable of acting and sets its own legislative calendar. Normally, the Bundestag sits for at least twenty weeks per year, interrupted by non-sessional weeks, especially a long parliamentary summer recess, during which the MPs are present in their constituencies. The course of a session week is traditionally always the same: meetings of the parliamentary faction's internal committees take place on Monday and Tuesday mornings, and meetings in the faction-plenary on Tuesday afternoon. From Wednesday to Friday, plenary sessions and committee meetings take place in parallel (this is the reason why often very few members are present at plenary debates). Committee meetings are interrupted on very important items on the agenda so that all MPs have the opportunity to be present in the plenary hall.[9] The highlights of the procedures include government statements by the Chancellor and the general debate at the beginning of the annual budget deliberations, during which there is a direct clash between the Chancellor and the opposition leader.
Independently of the usual procedure, the Bundestag can also convene for extraordinary sessions at any time. This must happen if one third of the MPs, the President of Germany or the Chancellor request it (Basic Law, Article 39.3).
The most important organisational structures within the Bundestag are 'factions' (Fraktionen; sing.Fraktion). A parliamentary faction must consist of at least 5% of all members of parliament. Members of parliament from different parties may only join in a faction if those parties did not run against each other in any German state during the election. Normally, all parties that surpassed the 5%-threshold build a faction of their own. TheCDU andCSU however, have always formed a joint faction, calledCDU/CSU or Union. This is possible, as the CSU only runs in the state ofBavaria and the CDU only runs in the other 15 states. The size of a faction determines the extent of its representation on committees, the time slots allotted for speaking, the number of committee chairs it can hold, and its representation in executive bodies of the Bundestag. The factions, not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities.
The leadership of each fraction consists of a parliamentary party leader, several deputy leaders, and an executive committee. The leadership's major responsibilities are to represent theFraktion, enforce party discipline and orchestrate the party's parliamentary activities. The members of eachFraktion are distributed amongworking groups focused on specific policy-related topics such as social policy, economics, and foreign policy. TheFraktion meets every Tuesday afternoon in the weeks in which the Bundestag is in session to consider legislation before the Bundestag and formulate the party's position on it.
Parties that do not hold 5% of the Bundestag-seats may be granted the status of agroup in the Bundestag; this is decided case by case, as the rules of procedure do not state a fixed number of seats for this. This status entails some privileges which are in general less than those of a faction.
Committees
Most of the legislative work in the Bundestag is the product of standing committees, which exist largely unchanged throughout one legislative period. The number of committees approximates the number of federal ministries, and the titles of each are roughly similar (e.g., defense, agriculture, and labor). There are, as of the current nineteenth Bundestag, 24 standing committees. The distribution of committee chairs and the membership of each committee reflect the relative strength of the various Parliamentary groups in the chamber. In the current nineteenth Bundestag, theCDU/CSU chaired ten committees, theSPD five, theAfD and theFDP three each,The Left and theGreens two each. Members of the opposition party can chair a significant number of standing committees (e.g. the budget committee is by tradition chaired by the biggest opposition party). These committees have either a small staff or no staff at all.
Administration
The members of Bundestag and the presidium are supported by the Bundestag Administration. It is headed by the Director, that reports to the President of the Bundestag. The Bundestag Administrations four departments are Parliament Service, Research, Information / Documentation and Central Affairs. The Bundestag Administration employs around 3,000 employees.
Location
Also following the tradition of Germandiets, the German Bundestag can legally convene on any location, domestic and foreign. The Reichstag plenary chamber is not determined by law as the location of the assembly, making it a facility of convenience. Bundestag's predecessor, theGerman Reichstag, convened in theKroll Opera House in Berlin, after the Reichstag with its then wooden interior and walls burned down in theReichstag fire.
After World War II, the Bundestag did not have own facilities to call home and had to convene in theBundeshaus in Bonn together with theBundesrat. 1953, the plenary chambers in the Bundeshaus had to be expanded and the Bundestag assembled in a radio building in Cologne. Until 1965, the Bundestag assembled inWest Berlin for nine sessions. Seven sessions have been held in theTechnische Universität Berlin and two sessions in Berlin's Congress Hall inTiergarten. The assemblies met severe protest from the communist side, the last session even interrupted bySoviet aircraft in supersonic low-altitude flight. 1971, the four occupying powers agree to not accept Bundestag assemblies in West Berlin anymore. The Bundestag assembled in the Old Waterworks Building in Bonn when the old plenary chamber had to get broken down, and in the new plenary chamber for only a few years after Germany's reunification.
The most distinctive assembly of the Bundestag outsite its regular chambers was on 4 October 1990, the day afterGerman reunification. The Bundestag assembled inside the Reichstag building in Berlin for the first time after 57 years, and remote from its then-regular home in Bonn. Soon after this most memorable assembly, the Bundestag decided to movefrom Bonn back to Berlin by a law which sets only the city of Berlin to be the home of the Bundestag, not the building.
^The Rules of Procedure of the Bundestag (German:Geschäftsordnung) allocate one Vice-President to each political group (Fraktion). However, each candidate must still be elected by a parliamentary majority. Due to the candidates put forth by the AfD and their unanimous rejection by all other parties, no AfD candidate has reached such a majority.
^Though the by-laws of the Bundestag do not mention such a position, the leader of the largest oppositionFraktion is called leader of the opposition by convention.
^German Citizens are defined in Article 116Grundgesetz
^Article 38 Section 2Grundgesetz: Any person who has attained the age of eighteen shall be entitled to vote; any person who has attained the age of majority may be elected.
^In contrast, there have only been two "genuine" votes of confidence (1982 and 2001) that the respective chancellor actually intended to win.
^Before 2023, overhang seats were added for the surplus constituency seats a party had won, and levelling seats added to maintain the proportional share of other parties. Levelling seats were also added to maintain the proportional share of seats between different states.
