Germany’s top court rejected an electoral system modification that would have disadvantaged smaller parties in parliamentary elections, according to a reportedly leaked verdict document.
Judges of the Constitutional Court decided that plans by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition administration to eliminate an exception to the 5% rule—a threshold parties must meet in order to enter the German parliament—are partially unconstitutional.
According to the report, the Left party, which is mostly influential in eastern Germany, and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria opposed the modification of the electoral laws.
Only parties that receive 5% of the vote are eligible for seats in parliament under Germany’s election system, which was designed in the post-war years to prevent legislative fragmentation and the growth of minor parties, both of which contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis in the 1930s.
The one exemption to this regulation, which Scholz’s alliance sought to eliminate, was that parties with the highest vote percentage nationally—regardless of whether it is less than 5%—are awarded parliamentary seats provided they win at least three single-member constituencies.
The court opinion states that eliminating this provision would be detrimental to the parties’ equal standing.
The most recent beneficiary of the rule was the Left party, heirs to the East German Communist Party, who won three directly elected mandates and formed a faction with dozens of legislators, despite receiving just 4.9% of the vote nationwide.
Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, permanently allied to the opposition Christian Democrats, also benefits. Since it runs only in the southeastern state, it rarely gets over 5%. It remains a parliamentary fixture since it tends to win most of Bavaria’s 45 constituencies outright.
The goal of the coalition’s reform was to stop the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, which currently has 733 seats, from getting bigger and more cumbersome over time.
In the current system, even if party candidates win specific constituencies, additional seats are established to ensure that the overall allocation stays proportionate.
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