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The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the lower house of the Germany federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag was established by Title III of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz) in 1949 as one of the legislative bodies of Germany, the other being the German Bundesrat.
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. As of the current 21st legislative period, the Bundestag has a fixed number of 630 members.
The Bundestag is elected every four years by German citizens aged 18 and older. Elections use a mixed-member proportional representation system which combines First-past-the-post voting for constituency-seats with proportional representation to ensure its composition mirrors the national popular vote. The German Bundestag cannot dissolve itself; only the president of Germany can do so under certain conditions.
Together with the Bundesrat, 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, the chancellor and the federal government are solely responsible to the Bundestag. The Bundestag also has sole budgetary authority.
The Bundestag's presiding officer is the president of the Bundestag; he or she is deputized by the Vice Presidents of the Bundestag. Since 2025, Julia Klöckner of the CDU/CSU is the president of the Bundestag. In the protocol order of the federation, the President of the Bundestag ranks second after the President and before the Chancellor.
Since 1999, the Bundestag has met in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The Bundestag also operates in multiple new government buildings in Berlin around the neo-renaissance house and has its own police force (the Bundestagspolizei), directly subordinated to the Bundestag Presidency.
The North German Confederation, founded in 1866/67, was the first German nation state with an established elected parliament, however this ended up being called the Reichstag. In 1870/71, the federation was expanded to include the southern German territories and was henceforth called the German 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 the First World War, that the Reichstag was given the right, as part of a constitutional reform, to withdraw 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 in Reichstag elections.
After its defeat in the First World War, Germany became a republic and a parliamentary democracy with the Weimar 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 the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Enabling Act of 1933 and the death of President Paul 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 the Basic 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. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Basic Law during the division, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former waterworks facility and finally in the Bundeshaus. 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 Germany at the Polls: The Bundestag Elections of the 1980s, Karl H. Cerny, Duke University Press, 1990, page 34 chosen by the House of Representatives, the city's legislature." Germany (Federal Republic of) Date of Elections: 5 October 1980", International Parliamentary Union.
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-called chancellor 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 (they have a right of veto in theory, but this has been used very rarely in the history of the Federal Republic).
The chancellor's election is one of the few cases in which a vote in the Bundestag requires a majority of all elected members, not just a majority of those assembled at the time, the so-called Kanzlermehrheit ("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:Basic Law, Article 63. The process begins with the President 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 appoints 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 the constructive 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 exceptions of Helmut Kohl, who was elected to his first term via a constructive vote of no confidence against Helmut Schmidt in 1982, and Friedrich Merz, who was elected chancellor during the second voting phase (on the second ballot), after not having received the necessary majority on the first ballot in 2025.
The Bundestag also has significant influence on the election of the President of Germany: All members of the Bundestag are ex officio members of the Federal Convention, a non-permanent constitutional body whose sole task is to elect the president; however, the convention also includes state electors, elected by the sixteen german state parliaments. The majority ratios in the Bundestag therefore do not necessarily have to correspond to those in the Federal Assembly.
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).
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. 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. 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:
Following the tradition of German parliamentarism, the Bundestag is subject to the principle 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 combining proportional representation with elements of first-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. 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 in 2025.
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 in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties, 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:
To qualify for any seats, however, a party must either win three single-member constituencies via first votes () or exceed a threshold 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 since 1949). 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 (currently Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and Romani 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 the South Schleswig Voters' Association, which represents the minorities of Danes and Frisians in Schleswig-Holstein and managed to win a seat in 1949, 2021, and 2025.
| 1949 | 80 |
| 1953 | 45 |
| 1957 | 17 |
| 1961 | – |
| 1965 | – |
| 1969 | – |
| 1972 | – |
| 1976 | – |
| 1980 | – |
| 1983 | – |
| 1987 | – |
| 1990 | – |
| 1994 | – |
| 1998 | – |
| 2002 | – |
| 2005 | – |
| 2009 | – |
| 2013 | – |
| 2017 | – |
| 2021 | 1 |
| 2025 | 1 |
| + Presidents of the Bundestag | |||||
| 1 | Erich Köhler (1892–1958) | CDU | 7 September 1949 | 18 October 1950 | |
| 2 | Hermann Ehlers (1904–1954) | CDU | 19 October 1950 | 29 October 1954 | |
| 3 | Eugen Gerstenmaier (1906–1986) | CDU | 16 November 1954 | 31 January 1969 | |
| 4 | Kai-Uwe von Hassel (1913–1997) | CDU | 5 February 1969 | 13 December 1972 | |
| 5 | Annemarie Renger (1919–2008) | SPD | 13 December 1972 | 14 December 1976 | |
| 6 | Karl Carstens (1914–1992) | CDU | 14 December 1976 | 31 May 1979 | |
| 7 | Richard Stücklen (1916–2002) | CSU | 31 May 1979 | 29 March 1983 | |
| 8 | Rainer Barzel (1924–2006) | CDU | 29 March 1983 | 25 October 1984 | |
| 9 | Philipp Jenninger (1932–2018) | CDU | 5 November 1984 | 11 November 1988 | |
| 10 | Rita Süssmuth (b. 1937) | CDU | 25 November 1988 | 26 October 1998 | |
| 11 | Wolfgang Thierse (b. 1943) | SPD | 26 October 1998 | 18 October 2005 | |
| 12 | Norbert Lammert (b. 1948) | CDU | 18 October 2005 | 24 October 2017 | |
| 13 | Wolfgang Schäuble (1942–2023) | CDU | 24 October 2017 | 26 October 2021 | |
| 14 | Bärbel Bas (b. 1968) | SPD | 26 October 2021 | 25 March 2025 | |
| 15 | Julia Klöckner (b. 1972) | CDU | 25 March 2025 | present |
/ref> 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 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 the Fraktion, enforce party discipline and orchestrate the party's parliamentary activities. The members of each Fraktion are distributed among focused on specific policy-related topics such as social policy, economics, and foreign policy. The Fraktion 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 a group 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.
After World War II, the Bundestag did not have own facilities to call home and had to convene in the Bundeshaus in Bonn together with the German Bundesrat. 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 in West Berlin for nine sessions. Seven sessions have been held in the Technische Universität Berlin and two sessions in Berlin's Congress Hall in Tiergarten. The assemblies met severe protest from the communist side, the last session even interrupted by Soviet Union 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 after German 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 move from Bonn back to Berlin by a law which sets only the city of Berlin to be the home of the Bundestag, not the building.
Informational notes
Citations
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