German Politics and Political Parties of Germany

German Political parties are explicitly recognized in the Basic Law, and they receive government subsidies.

The current German administration is a coalition of the moderate-to-conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), headed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), headed by Matthias Platzeck.

Following the latest elections in September 2005, these two major parties, which are normally bitter rivals, joined forces in an unusual “Grand Coalition” when neither was able to form a majority with its preferred coalition partner.

The CDU's territory covers all of Germany outside Bavaria, while the CSU is the CDU's Bavarian sister party. The CDU/CSU has 226 representatives, slightly more than the 222 SPD representatives.

The CDU/CSU controls the following ministerial posts: Chancellor, Chief of the Chancellor's Office, Interior, Economics, Defense, Family, Education, Consumer Protection/Agriculture, Culture, and Bundestag President. The SPD controls the following: Vice Chancellor, Foreign Affairs, Justice, Finance, Health, Environment, International Development, Labor, and Transportation.

The opposition parties represented in the Bundestag are the business-oriented Free Democratic Party (FDP), led by Guido Westerwelle; the Left Party, led by Lothar Bisky; and the ecologically oriented Green Party, led by Renate Künast and Fritz Kuhn.

The FDP has 61 seats, the Left Party has 54 seats, and the Green Party has 51 seats. Four seats are assigned to others. The Left Party is the successor to the former East Germany's communist Socialist Unity Party (SED). Far-right parties have no representation.

In order to win representation in the Bundestag or a state parliament, a party is required to obtain at least 5 percent of the vote. This minimum threshold is designed to prevent extremist parties on the left and right from exercising power. On the federal level, the “5 percent rule” has been successful in marginalizing extreme right-wing parties, but it has failed to prevent parties on the far left and right from gaining representation in certain state parliaments in the new eastern states.

For example, in the Brandenburg Landtag (Brandenburg state parliament), representation is as follows, reflecting the results of the latest election on September 19, 2004: SPD (33 seats), CDU (20 seats), the far-left Party of Democratic Socialism, or PDS (29 seats), and the far-right German People's Union, or DVU (6 seats). Following the election, the SPD and CDU took the unusual step of forming a ruling coalition, much like the one that subsequently took power on the federal level, to limit the influence of the PDS and DVU.