- The Karlsruhe ruling is a slap in the face to the traffic lights
Hamburg's CDU state and faction leader Dennis Thering sees the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling on the electoral reform as a defeat for Berlin's traffic light coalition. They wanted to scrap the basic mandate clause and have now failed, he said. "The traffic light coalition explicitly decided to weaken the CSU with this deletion, and it's good that the Federal Constitutional Court has now stopped this project of the SPD, Greens and FDP."
No party politics should be done with the electoral system. "And the traffic light coalition has violated this principle," said Thering. "It doesn't make the fight for democracy more credible if you act undemocratically yourself."
The Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the abolition of the so-called basic mandate clause in the new electoral law introduced by the traffic light coalition was unconstitutional. This clause ensured that parties could still enter the Bundestag with the strength of their second vote results if they fell below the five percent hurdle but won at least three direct mandates. The court has now temporarily reinstated this, until the legislature passes a new regulation.
With the reform, the size of the Bundestag was to be significantly reduced - by more than 100 compared to the current level, to a maximum of 630 parliamentarians. To achieve this, the coalition abolished overhang and equalization mandates. The judges in Karlsruhe have assessed this part of the reform as constitutional.
The Federal Constitutional Court's ruling on the electoral reform serves as a critique of the traffic light coalition's attempt to weaken certain parties' representation in elections. Thering believes that the coalition has violated the principle of not politicizing the electoral system.
