German Bundesrat
The German Bundesrat (German: [ˈbʊndəsˌʁaːt] , lit. 'Federal Council') is a legislative body[a] that represents the sixteen Länder (federated states) of Germany at the federal level (German: Bundesebene). The Bundesrat meets at the former Prussian House of Lords in Berlin. Its second seat is located in the former West German capital of Bonn .
This article is about the second federal legislative chamber in Germany, in which the state governments are represented. For the elected German parliament, see Bundestag.
German Federal Council
Deutscher Bundesrat
23 May 1949
69 seats
The Bundesrat legislates alongside the Bundestag, which consists of representatives directly elected by the German people. Laws that affect state powers and all constitutional changes need the consent of both houses. For its somewhat similar function, the Bundesrat is sometimes (controversially) described as an upper house of parliament along the lines of the United States Senate, the Canadian Senate, and the British House of Lords.[a]
The name "Bundesrat" was used by similar bodies in the North German Confederation (1867) and the German Empire (1871). The predecessor of the Bundesrat in the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) was the Reichsrat.
The political makeup of the Bundesrat is affected by changes in power in the states of Germany, and thus by elections in each state. Each state delegation in the Bundesrat is essentially a representation of the state government and reflects the political makeup of the governing coalition in each state legislature. Thus, the Bundesrat is a continuous body and has no legislative periods. For organizational reasons, the Bundesrat structures its legislative calendar in years of business (Geschäftsjahre), beginning each year on 1 November. Each year of business is congruous with the one-year-term of the Presidium of the Bundesrat. The sessions have been counted continuously since the first session on 7 September 1949. The Bundesrat's 1000th session took place on 12 February 2021 and was opened with a speech by President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
History[edit]
German Confederation[edit]
The historical predecessor of the Bundesrat was the Federal Convention (Confederate Diet) of the German Confederation (1815–1848, 1850/1851–1866). That Federal Convention consisted of the representatives of the member states. The first basic law (Bundesakte) of the German Confederation listed how many votes a member state had, for two different formations of the diet. The diet was the only organ – there was no division of powers. The diet was chaired by the Austrian representative.
In the revolution of 1848 the Bundestag transferred its powers to the Imperial Regent[1] and was reactivated only in 1850/1851. Several other attempts to reform the Confederation involved retaining the Bundestag and adding a parliament and a court. One of these attempts, the proposed Reform Act of 1863, had introduced the term Bundesrath. With the dissolution of the Confederation in August 1866,[2] the diet and the federal law ended.
Composition[edit]
Historically[edit]
For the Federal Diet of 1815, the basic law (Bundesakte) established two different formations. In the Plenary, for the most important decisions, every state had at least one vote. The larger states Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hannover and Württemberg had each four votes, and the lesser states three or two. Of the 39 states, 25 had only one vote.
The North German Confederation was an different entity from the German Confederation, but it can also be regarded as the brainchild of a long lasting reform debate within the German Confederation. The new Bundesrat even referred to the old diet in Article 6, when it redistributed the votes for each states. Prussia, originally with four votes, gained the votes of the states it had annexed in 1866, i.e. Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Holstein, Nassau, and Frankfurt, totaling 17 votes. The total number of votes in 1867 was 43 votes.
When the South German states joined in 1870/71, the revised federal constitutions allocated new votes for them. Bavaria had six votes, Württemberg four, Baden three, and (the whole of) Hesse-Darmstadt three. The total number went up to 58 votes, and in 1911, with three new votes for Alsace-Lorraine, to 61 votes. The Prussian votes remained 17.
To put the Prussian votes in context: 80% of North Germans lived in Prussia, and after 1871, Prussia made up two thirds of the German population and territory. Prussia was always underrepresented in the Bundesrat.