German Bundesrat

The **German Bundesrat** (commonly referred to as _Bundesrat_) is part of the parliament of Germany.

The cabinets of the 16 states of Germany appoint the delegations that represent them in the Bundesrat. They can remove them at any time. Normally, a state delegation is headed by the head of government. The delegation is made up of members of the state government.

Thirteen of the states of Germany (in German: _Bundesländer_) have a Minister-Präsident (Prime Minister), the other 3 are city-states which have a Mayor. These prime ministers or mayors each act as chairman of the Bundesrat for one year at a time.

Germany does not have a vice president. Instead if the Bundespräsident (Federal President) cannot do his job the President of the Bundesrat can act in his place if necessary.

## Building

Although it is a part of the German Parliament, the Bundesrat does not meet in the same building as the Bundestag. Instead new offices and a modern meeting chamber were built inside the old Prussian House of Lords building.

## Number of members

There are 58 members of the Bundesrat. How many delegates a _land_ (state) has depends on its population. The smallest state, Bremen, has three members. North Rhine-Westphalia is the _most populous_ (has the most people) _land_. It sends six members to the Bundesrat.

The Bundesrat decides most things by _absolute majority_ (at least half of the number of members). That is 35 votes. Some important decisions need two-thirds of all of the possible votes. That is 46 votes.

Each _land_ votes as a block. This means that Berlin, for example, can only cast four yes votes or four no votes. Its delegates cannot choose to vote in different ways. If a _land_ decided to send only one person to the Bundesrat, that person would still have all of the _land's_ votes. Usually the Minister President casts all of his _land's_ votes, even if the other members are there.

If a _land_ has a _coalition government_ (that is, a government of two or more political parties) then all parties must agree how to vote in the Bundesrat. In 2002 Brandenburg did not agree how to vote about the Immigration bill. The Federal Constitutional Court said that the bill was not law because Brandenburg's vote could not be included in the total. This meant that the bill did not get a majority in the Bundesrat.

## States

Situation as of December 2017.<br/ >
The Minister-President's party is the biggest party of a state's government, and often also the biggest party in a state's parliament.<br/ >
All of the votes of a state must be cast as a block. If the parties in a coalition do not agree how to vote then the Bundesrat can ignore that state's vote.

|Federal state|Inhabitants in millions|Minister-President|Party|Votes in Bundesrat|Party in government CDU / CSU|Party in government FDP|Party in government Greens|Party in government Linke|Party in government SPD|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
||10.63|Winfried Kretschmann|Greens|6|CDU||Greens|||
||12.60|Horst Seehofer|CSU|6|CSU|||||
||3.42|Michael Müller|SPD|4|||Greens|Linke|SPD|
||2.45|Dietmar Woidke|SPD|4||||Linke|SPD|
||0.66|Carsten Sieling|SPD|3|||Greens||SPD|
||1.75|Olaf Scholz|SPD|3|||Greens||SPD|
||6.05|Volker Bouffier|CDU|5|CDU||Greens|||
||7.79|Stephan Weil|SPD|6|||Greens||SPD|
||1.60|Manuela Schwesig|SPD|3|CDU||||SPD|
||17.57|Armin Laschet|CDU|6|CDU|FDP||||
||3.99|Malu Dreyer|SPD|4||FDP|Greens||SPD|
||0.99|Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer|CDU|3|CDU||||SPD|
||4.05|Michael Kretschmer|CDU|4|CDU||||SPD|
||2.24|Reiner Haseloff|CDU|4|CDU||Greens||SPD|
||2.82|Daniel Günther|CDU|4|CDU|FDP|Greens|||
||2.16|Bodo Ramelow|Linke|4|||Greens|Linke|SPD|

## Related pages

- President of the German Bundesrat
- List of presidents of the German Bundesrat

## Other websites

- Bundesrat (Germany)
- Members of the Bundesrat (German Wikipedia)