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.^[1]

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.
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.^[2]
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 ^[3]	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
Baden-Württemberg	10.63	Winfried Kretschmann	Greens	6	CDU		Greens
Bavaria	12.60	Horst Seehofer	CSU	6	CSU
Berlin	3.42	Michael Müller	SPD	4			Greens	Linke	SPD
Brandenburg	2.45	Dietmar Woidke	SPD	4				Linke	SPD
Bremen	0.66	Carsten Sieling	SPD	3			Greens		SPD
Hamburg	1.75	Olaf Scholz	SPD	3			Greens		SPD
Hesse	6.05	Volker Bouffier	CDU	5	CDU		Greens
Lower Saxony	7.79	Stephan Weil	SPD	6			Greens		SPD
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania	1.60	Manuela Schwesig	SPD	3	CDU				SPD
North Rhine-Westphalia	17.57	Armin Laschet	CDU	6	CDU	FDP
Rhineland-Palatinate	3.99	Malu Dreyer	SPD	4		FDP	Greens		SPD
Saarland	0.99	Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer	CDU	3	CDU				SPD
Saxony	4.05	Michael Kretschmer	CDU	4	CDU				SPD
Saxony-Anhalt	2.24	Reiner Haseloff	CDU	4	CDU		Greens		SPD
Schleswig-Holstein	2.82	Daniel Günther	CDU	4	CDU	FDP	Greens
Thuringia	2.16	Bodo Ramelow	Linke	4			Greens	Linke	SPD