Topic summary
21st Bundestag
The 21st Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany, was elected in the 23 February 2025 federal election. It was constituted on the last possible date, 25 March, with the old parliament changing the constitution in between.
The President of the Bundestag is Julia Klöckner (CDU). Each party's respective faction is supposed to be represented by one Vice-President, in most cases a formality. Since the AfD joined the Bundestag for the first time in 2017, no AfD candidate has ever been approved in dozens of attempts, due to the "firewall" policy of all other parties.
The 21st Bundestag is the first to have the fixed number of 630 members, 103 seats smaller than the 20th Bundestag, with 733 members resulting from former proportional regulations. It started with 208 members of the CDU/CSU (Union), 152 members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), 120 members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), 85 members of Alliance 90/The Greens (Grüne), 64 members of The Left (Linke), and one member of the Danish regional minority South Schleswig Voters' Association (SSW).
One AfD parliamentarian (Sieghard Knodel) left his party and its faction after on 2 May 2025 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, (BfV) Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency, had classified the AfD as a "confirmed right-wing extremist" organisation. This classification was temporarily suspended by the BfV just a week after its announcement.
On 6 May 2025 Friedrich Merz (CDU) was elected as Chancellor of Germany and sworn in alongside his cabinet. Merz failed to garner the required absolute majority of parliamentary votes in a first round of voting – a first in German history for a chancellor candidate.