Comparing the Bundestag to a dovecote would of course be going too far – but there is a surprising amount of movement in Parliament. In the current legislative period, 29 representatives have already resigned. Katja Kipping left the Bundestag just three months after the election to become a senator in Berlin for the Left. Eight more representatives from the ranks of the SPD, Greens and CDU moved to state governments.
The Social Democrat Yasmin Fahimi became head of the DGB, and Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (FDP) became ambassador to Russia. Former federal ministers Heiko Maas and Jürgen Trittin have left politics. Others became managing directors of associations, president of a federal office, police commissioner or had other reasons. Wolfgang Schäuble and three other MPs died. There were also changes because of the repeat election in Berlin. And in May, Stefan Müller, the former parliamentary managing director of the CSU, wants to give up his mandate to become president of the Bavarian Cooperative Association. He will then be the 30th MP who is no longer there.
The right to vote, which the CSU fought vehemently for, is now directed against them
Such changes usually have no impact on the majority in the Bundestag; politicians from the same party move up. But with cases 29 – that was former Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer at the beginning of April – and 30, things are different now. Scheuer and Müller are the first two CSU MPs to leave the Bundestag in this legislative period. And it is the first two that are subject to an exception in the electoral law. Nobody will step up for them.
The CSU will therefore no longer have 45, but only 43 MPs. This is due to a mechanism that was largely implemented by the CSU. But how can that be? The Christian Socialists are not necessarily known for giving up positions without necessity.
Alexander Dobrindt downplays the problem
In the 2021 federal election, the voting rights decided by the grand coalition still applied – after years of debates, the CDU, SPD and CSU agreed on this in the summer of 2020. A new regulation was introduced into the law, primarily due to pressure from the CSU. Until then, all so-called overhang mandates for one party were compensated for with compensatory seats for the other parties.
However, the grand coalition has now decided that the first three overhang mandates will no longer be compensated for. This should make the Bundestag smaller. Since it was already clear back then that these first three overhang mandates would be CSU mandates, it was also clear that the CSU would benefit from this regulation. And that’s what happened in the federal election. But with the departure of Scheuer and Müller, the regulation is now suddenly directed against the CSU.
Alexander Dobrindt, the head of the CSU in the Bundestag, downplays the problem. “It doesn’t burden us so much now because the end of the electoral period is approaching,” says Dobrindt. And he says that an “investigation process” is still ongoing in the case.
“The responsibility and decision in this case lies with the state election authority in Bavaria,” said the Bundestag administration when asked South German newspaper with. And as of Wednesday, the administration had actually “not yet received any written notification from the Bavarian state election authority.”
The SZ therefore asked the state election authority directly and received a clear answer: “According to Section 48 Paragraph 1 Sentence 2 of the Federal Election Act in the relevant version valid until June 13, 2023, moving up is excluded as long as the party in the relevant state is unbalanced has overhang mandates – this is the case here.” In short, this means: There will be no replacement for Scheuer and Müller. This also means that the entire Bundestag will shrink by two seats.