Germansplaining: Merz faces his next challenge

The Greens have already sold their approval to loosening the debt barrier  in the Bundestag for a few hundred billion in climate policies. Now, it’s down to Bavaria’s Freie Wähler (Free Voters) to name their price for passing the budget in the upper chamber. 

They’ll probably hash out a deal, and liberal democracy will get its “last chance” or fire its “last cartridge”, as some say. Meaning: if Germany’s problems don’t get sorted – fast – the extremists could be leading the charge in the next general election.

Speaking of democracy: it’s not exactly a great omen that Merz had to rely on the old Bundestag to approve his fiscal measures, as with the newly elected parliament a two-thirds majority would only be possible with the AfD or the hard left.

The new Bundestag convenes for the first time next week, but it comes with a rather undemocratic flaw. Not a fatal one, but damaging enough when it comes to trust in the system.

Here’s the issue: Germany’s proportional representation system always had an important personalised element – half the seats go to MPs who win their constituency (first vote), while the other half is allocated based on party results (second vote). Over time, voters got savvy and started “splitting” their votes between different parties. 

This led to a recurring problem: the conservatives in the south won more direct seats than their share allowed, creating Überhangmandate (overhang mandates). To keep things fair, extra seats were added for other parties, inflating the Bundestag into a legislative giant – 736 MPs in 2021, making it the world’s largest freely elected parliament.

So, the last coalition pushed through electoral reform to cap the size at 630 seats. The Constitutional Court nodded it off, but the changes caused controversy – and on election night it became painfully clear why: 23 candidates who won their constituencies were denied entry to the Bundestag because the reform devalued the first vote.

Take Bavaria: the CSU won all 47 constituencies but only secured 37.2% of the second vote. Result? Just 44 seats, leaving the winners with the lowest vote shares empty-handed. These are usually from hotly contested urban centres, where multiple candidates split the vote.

Direktkandidaten from CDU, CSU, SPD and AfD were affected nationwide. Some constituencies will now be represented not by the MP who won the most votes, but by party-list candidates. And some places won’t be represented in Berlin at all because their winners were too low on their parties’ lists.

Here’s an example to highlight the absurdity: Green chancellor-candidate and outgoing economics minister Robert Habeck lost his Flensburg-Schleswig constituency. He got 22.6% of the first vote. His CDU challenger, Petra Nicolaisen, won with 26.5%. But Habeck, high up on the Greens’ party list, still gets a Bundestag seat. Nicolaisen doesn’t – she wasn’t ranked high enough by the CDU.

Now, try explaining that to a schoolchild.

One of the unlucky winners I spoke to, Volker Ullrich from Augsburg, summed it up: “In politics, you always have to be prepared to lose. But I won, and still…” 

For decades, there’s been hand-wringing over waning democratic engagement and voter apathy. Hard to see how disenfranchising the very people who campaigned tirelessly – and successfully – in town squares helps restore faith in democracy.

So, among the many challenges awaiting Merz, add this: reforming the reform – without bloating the Bundestag all over again. The last CDU/SPD coalition already reduced the constituencies from 299 to 280 and may have to go further on this road. It won’t help the 23 candidates robbed of their victory, but it might just prevent more casualties in the future.

And while they’re at it, how about fixing voting access for expats? Miguel Berger, Germany’s ambassador in London, was just one of who-knows-how-many who couldn’t vote because his election documents didn’t arrive in time. German efficiency Season 2025, episode 17. To be continued.