Parties in the Bundestag : Germany

Since the first general election to be held in the whole of Germany (1990) there have been six parties in the Bundestag: the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the group known as Alliance 90/The Greens. The CDU has no party association in Bavaria, while the CSU puts up candidates for election in Bavaria only. In the Bundestag, however, CDU and CSU have a joint parliamen-tary group. The SPD, CDU, CSU and FDP were formed in the western states between 1945 and 1947. The SPD was a re-creation of the former mainly labor-oriented party of the same name which had been outlawed by the Hitler regime in 1933. The other parties were completely new. The Christian parties CDU and CSU, in contrast to the Catholic Centre Party of Weimar days, drew their support from both of Germany’s two major Christian creeds, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The FDP adopted programs in the tradition of German liberalism.

In the five decades since their establishment, these four parties have undergone significant changes. At the federal level they have all formed coalitions with one another once or been in opposition. Today they all see themselves as “popular” parties representing all sections of the community. They have different factions which reflect the various elements of a people’s party.

From 1983 to 1990 the party “The Greens”, too, had its own group in the Bundestag. It had been established at the national level in 1979 and was gradually voted into some of the state parliaments as well. Its roots lie in a radical ecologist movement which initially embraced factions opposed to nuclear energy as well as pacifist protest groups. In the 1990 general election, however, The Greens failed to clear the five percent hurdle, but they were nonetheless represented in the Bundestag, sharing a list with Alliance 90, a product of the civil rights movement which in 1989/90 brought about the peaceful revolution in the former GDR. On 14 May 1993 these two parties merged into one under the name “Alliance 90/The Greens”. This party polled enough votes in the 1994 election to be represented in the Bundestag.

The PDS is the successor to the former Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), the communist party which ruled in the GDR. It has not been able to establish itself as a major political force in united Germany. In 1990 the PDS - like the Alliance 90/The Greens group - was only represented in the Bundestag by virtue of an exception allowing the five percent clause to be applied separately in the new federal states and the existing ones in the west for the benefit of the parties in the eastern part of the country. In the 1994 Bundestag election, the PDS achieved representation in the Bundestag on the basis of four constituency seats in Berlin.