• Organization and working methods
  • Introduction
  • Beginning of the electoral term
  • Organs of the Bundestag
  • Plenary sittings
  • Rights of the Bundestag to participate in mixed institutions
  • Membership of executive bodies
• Members
• Legislation
• Information counter
• Databases
• Europe
• International
• Virtual tour of the Parliament Quarter
• Parliamentary Library

• Imprint and copyright

When the (provisional) final result of the Bundestag election is announced, each party knows approximately how many seats it has won and therefore how large its parliamentary group will be. The parliamentary groups meet in Berlin in the first few days after the election to analyze the result and to discuss their internal organization. In the 1st electoral term (1949-1953), the Bundestag was composed of 8 parliamentary groups. From the 4th to the 9th electoral term (1961-1983), the Bundestag had only three parliamentary groups (CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP). In the 10th and 11th electoral terms (1983-1990) they were joined by a fourth - that of the Greens.

In the 12th electoral term (1990-1994), a special feature of the first all-German elections enabled two further groupings to enter the Bundestag: the PDS/Left List and Alliance 90/The Greens. The Federal Constitutional Court had ruled that, in this first all-German election, parties only had to win at least 5% of the votes in either the old or the new federal states in order to gain representation in the Bundestag and not, as is usually the case, in the federal territory as a whole. In the 14th electoral term, the Bundestag was composed of five parliamentary groups (SPD, CDU/CSU, Alliance 90/The Greens, FDP, and PDS). With the beginning of the current 15th electoral term the parliamentary groups have been reduced to four again: SPD, CDU/CSU, Alliance 90/The Greens and FDP.

In accordance with the Bundestag's Rules of Procedure, a parliamentary group may be formed on the following conditions:

• It must comprise at least 5% of the Members of the Bundestag, i.e. at least 31 Members; the purpose of stipulating a minimum size, analogous to the so-called 5% clause of the Federal Electoral Act, is to prevent a large number of small groupings from gaining parliamentary group status and then making excessive use of the parliamentary powers it confers, as this could create undue confusion and pressure of time in the Bundestag's work;
• Its members must belong to the same party or to parties which have similar political objectives and do not, therefore, compete with one another in any of the 16 Länder. For example, the CDU (present in all Länder apart from Bavaria) and the CSU (present only in Bavaria) have formed a single parliamentary group in every electoral term since 1949.

Parliamentary groups play a decisive role in the work of the Bundestag. It is in their parliamentary groups that the political parties agree on the positions they then present publicly in the Bundestag. The public expects the parliamentary groups to take a unanimous stance on major issues. And parliamentary groups themselves need unity on major issues both to sharpen their political profile and to ensure the effectiveness of their parliamentary work. Generally, they do not need to "whip" their members into line to ensure unity of this kind.

With regard not only to the passage of legislation but also to a host of other parliamentary functions in the Bundestag, the Rules of Procedure confer certain rights exclusively on the parliamentary groups - or 5% of the Members of the Bundestag. For instance, only they have the right to introduce bills and table motions; to move amendments to bills on third reading; to request postponement of items of business or of a sitting; to question whether the plenary has a quorum; and to demand a recorded vote, a debate on a matter of topical interest, or the setting up of study commissions or committees of inquiry. Without doubt, therefore, the parliamentary groups are the key centres of political power, and the main driving forces, in the work of the Bundestag.

Each parliamentary group elects an executive committee comprising a chairman, several deputy chairmen, parliamentary secretaries and a varying number of other Members. In the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, the chairman of the CSU Land group, bringing together all the CSU Members from Bavaria, is also traditionally the 1st deputy chairman of the group. The executive committee's term of office varies among the parliamentary groups. Whereas the CDU/CSU parliamentary group always elects its executive committee for an entire electoral term, the SPD parliamentary group does so first for 12 months and thereafter for 18 months, and the FDP always for one year at a time.

Each parliamentary group sets up a number of working groups to prepare the ground for decisions subsequently taken by the parliamentary group as whole. Each parliamentary group also appoints a spokesman for each Bundestag committee. He is responsible for coordinating the work of the members of the parliamentary group on the respective committee and for ensuring that they act in line with the positions agreed by the group as a whole. Thus, the work of the Bundestag's committees, too, is largely prepared and steered by the parliamentary groups.