There has been talk for years about downsizing the Bundestag, which has grown to XL dimensions. Nothing really happened. Now it is to judge a reform commission of the Bundestag. The taxpayers’ association makes proposals.
The taxpayers’ association has appealed to the Bundestag’s commission to reform electoral law to find a solution for reducing the size of parliament.
“The aim must be to keep parliamentary democracy away from damage and to strengthen the credibility of politics,” said Reiner Holznagel, President of the Taxpayers’ Association, in a letter to the members of the Commission. It is available from the German Press Agency in Berlin.
736 MPs instead of 598
The Bundestag grew to a record size of 736 MPs in last September’s election. The standard size is 598 mandates – 299 directly elected in the constituencies and 299 via the state lists. Due to a complicated system of overhang and compensation mandates, however, this number has continued to rise for several elections. In the past two electoral periods, several attempts to change this have failed.
The Bundestag commission is to present proposals for the reform of the electoral law and for the modernization of parliamentary work. It consists of 13 deputies and 13 experts. From mid-May she wants to discuss the right to vote.
“More democracy not guaranteed”
With 736 MPs, it is the largest democratic unicameral parliament in the world, and Holznagel has now written that the statutory size of 598 MPs has been exceeded by 138 seats. “More democracy is not guaranteed on this path – on the contrary. The constant development towards more mandates means less speaking time, tighter space, meetings until the wee hours, a hindrance to work in the specialist committees – and last but not least more money.»
This year, the limit of 1.1 billion euros in total costs of the Bundestag will be exceeded. «This can hardly be explained to the citizens. Many of them even see a reduction in parliament below the standard size of 598 as necessary,” the letter continues. This also went to the Presidium of the Bundestag, the Council of Elders, the chairmen of the parliamentary groups and the parliamentary directors.
The taxpayers’ association also referred to a Civey survey it commissioned immediately after the federal elections last September. In it, around 94 percent of those questioned said that the number of MPs was too large. An online petition with the appeal “End the XXL Bundestag! 500 deputies are enough!» has already been drawn more than 530,000 times.
Source: Stern
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