Tweaks to MMP in Germany?

I am aware that there have been ongoing efforts to introduce some small reforms in the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system in Germany. The main challenge is to prevent the Bundestag from expanding so much in size, since a Constitutional Court ruling mandated full compensation.

The brief background is that the system has long had the potential for adding seats to cope with “overhangs”, which happen when a party in a state wins more districts than its party-list share would entitle it to. The Court ruled that the procedure in place over many elections still left the system unacceptably disproportional. (Manuel posted a good primer on the changes back in 2013; see also a long and interesting comment thread here on F&V.)

There are proposals currently being considered in the Bundestag that would attempt to limit the expansion in the chamber’s size that the current system allows. For instance, in 2017, the size went from the basic 598 (299 nominal and initially as many list) to 709 (401 list seats!).

The article I have is from AP, and (predictably) is thin on detail. All it says in the way of substance is:

The new proposal mainly involves keeping the number of constituencies unchanged in the 2021 election but slightly reducing the number of extra seats. By the time of the 2025 election, it calls for the number of constituencies to be cut to 280. A reform commission is supposed to produce a detailed plan.

The article also notes that opposition parties “weren’t impressed.”

I hope some readers might have more detail on what is being proposed.

Thuringia: Leader of smallest party in state parliament elected premier, with AfD support

This is a strange development, and one to keep a concerned eye on. The German state of Thuringia, which held an election October, 2019, will now have a premier from the Free Democrats (FDP), who barely cleared the 5% threshold in the election. The FDP candidate for state premier, Thomas Kemmerich, was elected by one vote over the incumbent, Bodo Ramelow, of the Left Party. With the help of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), an extreme right party, Kemmerich defeated Ramelow in a third round of voting, 45-44.

The two largest parties in the state parliament since the 2019 election are the two most extreme parties in the German party system–The Left with 29 seats, and the AfD with 22. The Christian Democrats (CDU) came third with 21, then 8 for the Social Democrats (8), and 5 each for Greens and FDP (who really did just scrape over with 5.0%). The outgoing government was Linke-SPD-Green. But they fell to 42 seats out of the 90, compared to 46 in 2014. The 2014 outcome was also a little unusual–a three-party coalition excluding the largest party (CDU, which had 34, with Left second on 28). But not as unusual as whatever government Kemmerich will put together now.

I don’t know how common a government led by the sixth largest party in parliament is, but I am guessing pretty uncommon. (Answer in comments!) Kemmerich says he will not bring the AfD into a coalition, but he now owes his position to them. What does this mean for the cordon sanitaire the establishment parties (and the Left, which really can’t be called “establishment”) have been maintaining against the far right?

UPDATE: The premier-elect has resigned, and early elections will be proposed. A decision on early elections requires a vote in the state parliament. In fact, it requires a two-thirds majority, and at this point the state’s CDU leadership has been opposed to returning to the electorate.

Open lists in MMP: An option for BC and the experience in Bavaria

One of the options for electoral reform in British Columbia is mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation. The criteria for the potential system allow for a post-referendum decision (if MMP is approved by voters) on whether the party lists should be open or closed. The guide that was sent to all BC voters shows a mock-up of a ballot that looks like New Zealand’s, with closed lists. However, the provincial premier has stated that, if MMP is adopted, lists will be open.

When it comes to lists, it is my opinion that citizens will elect all of the members of the legislature. They will select names that are representative of their communities.

I remain uncertain about the value of open lists under MMP. Is it worth the extra ballot complexity? What additional gain does one get from having preference votes determine order of election for those winning compensatory seats? The MMP Review in New Zealand after the 2011 referendum (in which voters voted to keep MMP) looked at this question extensively. It came down firmly on the side of keeping lists closed.

Nonetheless, the statement by the premier suggests he believes the system is less likely to be chosen if voters expect the lists to be closed. And, given regional districts on the compensation tier, as explicitly called for in the system proposal, the lists would not be too long and thus the ballots not too complex.

It happens that there is one MMP system in existence in which the lists are open. Such a system has been used in Bavaria for quite some time. I actually proposed such a model in a post way back in 2005, quite early in the life of this blog. At the time I had no idea that what I had “invented” was, more or less, the existing Bavarian model.

Of course, Bavaria just had an election. In the thread on that election, Wilf Day offered some valuable insights into how the open lists worked. I am “promoting” selections from Wilf’s comments here. Indented text in the remainder of this post is by Wilf.

The Bavarian lists are fully “open,” and the ballot position has no bearing on the outcome, except to the extent the voters are guided by it, especially seen in voting for the number 1 candidate.

Of the 114 list seats, 31 were elected thanks to voters moving them up the list, while 83 would have been elected with closed lists.

Did the first on the list always get elected? Almost. In the region of Lower Bavaria, the liberal FDP elected only 1 MLA, and he had been second on their regional list.

Did the open lists hurt women? I did not check most results, but the SPD zippers their lists, and I noticed in Upper Palatinate the SPD elected 2 MLAs, list numbers 1 and 3 (two women). Conversely, in Middle Franconia the SPD elected 4 MLAs: 1, 2, 3, and 5 (three men).

Little known fact: a substantial number of voters in Bavaria, being used to voting in federal elections where their second vote is just for a party, blink at the Bavarian ballot, look for the usual space to vote beside the party name, it’s not there, so they put an X beside the party name anyway. A spoiled ballot? No, they count it as a vote for the party. Not a vote for the list as ranked, it does not count for the ranking or for any candidate, but it does count in the party count. Just like Brazil, where a vote for the party is not a vote for the list ranking, except Bavaria does not publicize the option of voting for the party.

Among the more interesting new Free Voter MLAs:

Anna Stolz, lawyer, Mayor of the City of Arnstein; she had been elected Mayor in 2014 as the joint candidate of the Greens, SPD, and Free Voters; the local Greens said they were very proud of her as Mayor. The Free Voter delegates meeting made her number 5 on the state list, but the voters moved her up to second place as one of the two Free Voter MLAs from Lower Franconia.

From Upper Bavaria, the capital region, list #12 was Hans Friedl, with his own platform: “a socially ecologically liberal voice, an immigration law based on the Canadian model, no privatization of the drinking water supply, a clear rejection of the privatization of motorways”). The voters moved him up to #8, making him the last of 8 Free Voters elected in that region.

Note: the comments are excerpted, and the order of ideas is a little different from where they appear in the thread. I thank WIlf for his comments, and for his permission to make them more prominent.

Bavaria 2018

As most readers of this blog probably already know, the German state of Bavaria held its state assembly election on 14 October. The result was a huge rebuke to the long-governing Christian Social Union, which is the regional alliance partner of federal Chancellor Angle Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.

The CSU normally wins a majority of seats on its own, but will be far short this time. (I read somewhere that this is only the third time the party has been below 50% of seats in the postwar period, but I did not confirm whether that is correct.)

The CSU has won 37.2% of the votes, a loss of over ten percentage points compared to the previous state election. The biggest gain was for the Greens, who will now be the second largest party in the state assembly, having won 17.5% of the votes. The Free Voters are next, with 11.6%. Then comes the SPD; their 9.7% is a loss of over half their vote percentage since last election. The FDP barely cleared the 5% threshold (5.1%), and the extreme-right AfD easily entered the assembly for the firs time, with 10.2%. The Left Party was below the threshold (3.2%).

So, what will the next government of Bavaria be? The CSU has, of course, ruled out working with the AfD. They would have a majority if they joined with the Greens, but that seems unlikely. The CSU+FDP would probably not be a majority (although given below-threshold votes, which total around 8.6%, maybe it will be when the seat allocations are complete). That leaves the Free Voters as the most likely option. They are a center-right party; at least I think that is a fair characterization. Actually, characterizing them as a “party” might be controversial. They claim to be a collection of independents, and they do not require their members of the assembly to vote as a bloc. That may have to change, soon.

No Jamaica?

The “preliminary” talks between the CDU, CSU, Greens, and FDP on a so-called “Jamaica coalition” have hit an impasse, with the FDP pulling out. This was the only viable coalition following the recent elections, assuming the SPD doesn’t change its mind and decide to go back into government.

So, new elections? Or sweetening the FDP’s offer, while somehow not losing the Greens?

MMP weekend: Germany and New Zealand 2017

We are entering days of convergences. Over the next two days, the Jewish and Islamic new years and the first day of Autumn coincide. Then, on the weekend, we have the convergence of elections in the two countries that offer our best examples of mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation electoral systems: Germany and New Zealand. (Lest I be accused of hemispherism, let me hasten to note that in one of those countries, the election will be the day after the start of spring.)

In the case of Germany, which votes Sunday, there really has been no doubt for some time that the CDU/CSU alliance would place first, but it will be down from its 2013 result. There is also little doubt that the two parties that missed the 5% party-vote threshold in 2013 will clear it this time: the center-right FDP and the far-right AfD. The SPD, which briefly flirted with the lead in the polls some months after changing its leadership, looks like it may struggle to break 25% of the vote. The real question is what the coalition will be, after the election results are known.

I would expect the SPD to want a period of opposition to recollect itself after what looks sure to be another disappointing result for the party. Thus it may not be willing to renew the current CDU/CSU+SPD big coalition (what we should stop calling a grand coalition; my more direct translation of the German term is more apt). If the FDP has enough seats to combine with the CDU/CSU, we might see a return to the center-right combo that governed from 2009 to 2013, as well as in many past terms. There is just enough error in the projections from polling to allow for the possibility that this could be a viable combine. (Mouse over the numbers in the table at that link for the range of vote and seat projections for each party.)

However, the most likely result seems to me to be Jamaica! I will admit to rooting for this: CDU/CSU + FDP + Green. (The name refers to the parties’ colors.)

In New Zealand, the contest for Saturday’s election is much more uncertain. For months it seemed National, which heads the current multi-party governing arrangement, was cruising to another win. Then Labour changed its leader and surged (similar to the German pattern). By a few weeks ago, the two largest parties were running neck and neck, while the Greens stumbled badly and looked at risk of failing to clear the 5% party-vote threshold. This scenario was posing a potential difficult challenge for center-left voters: Do you vote Labour to bolster its formateur status (as the largest party, although there is no formal right of first attempt to the largest in New Zealand)? Or do you vote Green to ensure there is a viable partner for Labour other than Winston Peters and his New Zealand First (NZF) party? Given that the electoral system is MMP, you can do both: vote for Labour in your district (electorate) and vote Green on the list. However, while that might be a voter’s way of making a statement of preferred coalition, only the party vote affects the overall balance of seats in parliament. (Some exceptions to that statement, as I will get to below, but none likely relevant to the Labour-Green situation discussed here.)

In recent days, some polling suggests that National might be pulling ahead again. The result could be very close, and it could be a situation in which NZF is pivotal (although that may be less likely than it seemed some weeks ago). That is, assuming NZF makes it. The party has been tending downward and is hovering near 5%, as are the Greens . Here is where the electorate (district/nominal) vote comes in. The threshold provision for a party to participate in nationwide proportional allocation is 5% of party-list votes or one electorate. (Additional MPs elected beyond the electorate candidate are what I have termed “piggyback MPs“, not to be confused with that other MMP creature, the “shadow MP“.) The Greens do not have an electorate where they are viable, but NZF does.

Peters, the NZF leader, currently holds an electorate seat, Northland, having won it in a by-election in 2015. He is the party’s candidate again for the seat. If he retains it, his party would qualify for additional list seats, even if it fell below the 5% party-vote threshold.

The other electorate contests that matter include the one in Epsom, although it is not really a contest. The seat is safe for the one Act MP, David Seymour, who is quite certain to return. It is probably not likely that the Act party vote will be sufficient to earn the party a second seat, although I saw one projection a week or so ago that suggested it was possible. Act has been a governing partner with National since 2008.

Then there is Waiariki, one of the Maori set-aside seats. (Voters who claim Maori descent can choose to vote in their special Maori electorate or in the general electorate seat in which the reside.) Te Ururoa Flavell is fighting to hold the seat, which is the only way his party will retain a presence in parliament. That is quite a change for the party, which has been a National governing partner since 2008. In the past it has won as many as five electorate seats (in 2008) and in 2014 it had sufficient party votes to win a list seat for the first time, in addition to its win in Waiariki electorate. This time, it may end up with just one seat–or zero.

One electorate we know will not matter this time is Ohariu. United Future leader Peter Dunne resigned in August, after a 33-year career as an MP. This effectively kills the party, which has been a support partner to every government, whether led by Labour or National, since 2002. Only in 2002 did the party clear the party-vote threshold, and since 2008, Dunne has been its only member.

In an interesting twist on the Ohariu story, the Greens had initially decided not to contest the seat, in order to give the Labour candidate a chance to defeat Dunne and thereby knock a National partner out of the government-formation equation. When Dunne resigned, the Greens announced a candidate for the seat. With Dunne not running, there is no scenario in which this electorate will matter for the parliamentary balance, so there was no reason for the Greens not to have “local face” on the party (even though many of its voters will split their vote and give their electorate vote to the Labour candidate anyway). Running a candidate is thus another example of what I have called green contamination.

Two MMP elections in one weekend. Now that will be something to watch!

 

No, the allies did not “impose” MMP on Germany

An entry on the Whoa! Canada blog claims that the mixed-member proportional (MMP) electoral system Germany uses was an imposition of the allied occupational authorities.

For those who don’t know, at the end of Second World War the victorious Allies governments imposed Mixed Member Proportional Representation on West Germany.

They did this specifically to prevent the rise of another Hitler.

Further on, it makes a specific claim about the then British Prime Minister, in a bold subheading of a section that actually does not even try to elaborate on its claim:

Winston Churchill knew Proportional Representation was a defence against fascism.

This is all very fanciful. The allied occupation authorities did not “impose” MMP on Germany, and the British in particular favored reverting to Germany’s pre-Weimar majoritarian system, as did the Americans. MMP was a product of compromise among the various German parties and the American, British, and French occupation governments.

The (unsourced) claim that Churchill saw PR as a bulwark against fascism is especially creative. At the time, PR was widely (if inaccurately) seen as responsible for the rise of the Nazis. If anything in the German system was adopted to be a bulwark against fascism, it was the 5% threshold–the very most non-proportional feature of the system to this day.

For a good overview of the adoption of MMP in Germany, see Susan E. Scarrow, “Germany: The Mixed-Member System as a Political Compromise,” in Matthew S. Shugart and Martin P. Wattengerg, eds., Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? Oxford University Press, 2001.

AfD pulls ahead of CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

The CDU finished in third place, just behind the right-wing populist Afd, in the state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The SPD remains on top, but with only around 30% of the votes.

But there is a silver lining: the NPD fell below the threshold. (So did the FDP and the Greens). The neo-nazi NPD had seats in the outgoing assembly.

Two more AfD breakthroughs in German state elections

Hard on the heels of clearing the 5% threshold in the Saxony elections, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won a chunk of seats in both Brandenburg and Thuringia. The party went over 10% in both states.

There is even speculation that the Left Party could get its first premier, because the current CDU-SPD coalition (Christian Democrats and Social Democrats) is well short of a majority of the vote in Thuringia. (The two parties had combined for 49.7% in 2009, and easily won a majority of seats in that election.) The Left Party (28.2%) is in second place to the CDU (33.5%), with the SPD third (12.4%). Greens won 5.7%. The three-party bloc of Left-SPD-Greens coalition has 46 seats, the same as the CDU-SPD bloc. Either would control a bare majority of the assembly’s 91 seats. (The AfD is the only other party to have won seats, and has 11; no one is interested in it as a coalition partner.)

In Brandenburg, the SPD retained its plurality, with 31.9%. It currently governs with the Left as a junior partner. The Left, which won 18.6% in this election, is down 9 seats from the last election. The two parties’ combined strength of 47 seats is still a majority in the assembly of 88 seats. SPD (30) + CDU (21) is also a possibility. In additions to the 11 new seats for the AfD, a party called Brandenburg United Civic Movements/Free Voters broke through and won 3 seats. Given that its list vote was only 2.7%, it obviously won on the strength of single-seat district wins.

The Free Democrats continue their collapse. They had 7.6% in Thuringia in 2009 but managed a mere 2.5% this time. It was even worse in Brandenburg, where the FDP won only 1.5% of the vote.

Before the election, federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose CDU is in coalition with the SPD (and the Bavarian CSU) warned against the possibility of a Left-SPD alliance in Thuringia, saying:

There’s a big national party here, the SPD, with a proud history…who would have thought that. A big, proud party like the SPD is making itself small.

Merkel’s remark is a tad self-serving. She has a vested interest in the SPD not trying out new partnerships with the Left (in addition to those states where such a coalition already has worked). Given her lack of partners, with the unattractive (for the mainstream) AfD replacing the FDP on the right, she needs the SPD to be a wiling junior partner for her party.

As I noted before the last federal election, small is exactly what the SPD has become, and its coalitions with the CDU are nowadays somewhat less than “grand”.

Saxony, 2014: FDP out, AfD in

The German state of Saxony voted today. The most noteworthy outcome of the election is that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has replaced the Free Democrats (FDP) in the state’s assembly. Both parties just missed clearing the nationwide threshold in the national elections last year. For the FDP, today’s result continues a streak of bad results. For the AfD it represents their first seats in any state legislature. And it was not a close call: the party won 9.7% of the vote.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) remains the largest party, on 39.4%, with the Linke (Left) in a distant second (18.9%). The Social Democrats (SPD) won 12.4%. Greens are at 5.7%, and the National Democrats fall just below the threshold at 4.9%.

The outgoing government was a CDU-FDP coalition. What will the new one be? It would seem it would be CDU-SPD. Is that now set to be the “natural” coalition in German state and national politics?

Piggyback MPs

[Update: I am adding this to the Germany block, due to a discussion that has arisen in the comments.]

Under New Zealand’s variant of Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP), there are two alternative thresholds for receiving party-list seats. Either a party must obtain over 5% of the party-list vote, or else it must win a single district (electorate) and sufficient party-list votes to elect two or more MPs in total (even if its list vote is under 5%).

The latter path towards winning proportional representation seats is referred to in New Zealand as “coat-tailing”. I suppose New Zealanders can call it whatever they want, as long as it is clear to them, given that it’s their electoral system and a problem pretty much unique to them. But I don’t like the term. I understand coat tails as support on one vote (e.g. for congress) that is enhanced by having a popular candidate for another (e.g. president). But that is not what we see in New Zealand. We are talking about an alternative threshold for representation in a single institution, not voting across institutions. Moreover, a case of high coattails normally would mean reduced ticket-splitting. By contrast, in New Zealand, what seems to trouble many commentators (including the Electoral Commission in its MMP Review) is precisely incentives to ticket-split, not by abandoning a small party on the electorate vote (which might be the “normal” type of split-ticket voting under MMP), but in favor of a small party in the electorate vote. For example: National-favoring voters in Epsom voting for the local Act candidate, who had a chance at winning the electorate (and did indeed win it), but giving their list vote to National. The objection is that these voters seem to have more weight by virtue of living in a district that is so safe for one party that a small partner party can win it. But that’s not coattails, as usually understood.

In any case, this was not meant to be just a screed over terminology (though who doesn’t love such screeds?). I wanted to note that a new party in New Zealand, the Internet Party, can win seats only through this provision, whatever we might call it. The IP (good acronym for them!) has formed an alliance with the Mana Party, whose leader, Hone Harawira, has a safe Maori electorate (Te Tai Tokerau).* If Internet Mana were to win enough list votes for two seats, but elect only the one Mana candidate, then the IP would get a candidate via the list (its leader holds the number one slot on the joint list), even without coming near 5% of the list vote. In fact, about 1.3% of the vote would be sufficient.**

Yet the IP actually is against the so-called coat-tailing!

There seems to be a flaw in the process, and it is not necessarily the provision for the alternative threshold. It is in how alliances are allowed to take advantage:

In the Internet Party’s case it could potentially create a public backlash as its alliance with Mana expires just six weeks after the election.

Yes, that would seem backlash-worthy.

As for what to call this type of entry into parliament, I offer a suggestion in the title of this post.

___________
* In this electorate, Labour has done something clever: nominate its local candidate, Kelvin Davis, to a rather low list position. “His ranking of 18 would blunt a Mana tactic of asking people to vote for Mr Harawira because Mr Davis had a safe list spot and would be an MP anyway.”

** A potential fly in the ointment is that Mana might elect two electorate MPs, in which case IP is out of luck, unless the list vote goes considerably higher. In fact, if you are a Maori voter in the one non-safe but within-reach electorate for Mana, and you do not happen to like the alliance with IP, your strategy is clear: vote for the Mana candidate, and you get to help block the IP.

The impact of M=96 and no legal threshold

The decision of the German Constitutional Court to invalidate the legal threshold for election of MEPs has been predictably consequential. Given the single 96-seat district, a very large number of parties has won at least one seat, and some have won with less than 1% of the vote.

There will be thirteen parties (counting the CDU and CSU separately) in the German delegation. Seven of them had less than the former 3% threshold; the biggest of the sub-3% parties had not even quite 1.5%. The German government reports the votes; seats are shown at Wikipedia.

Assuming the Wikipedia list is accurate (and it looks likely to be so), these parties that won representation thanks to the Court ruling are: Free Voters, Pirates, Human Environment Animal Protection, National Democrats (yes, a German neo-Nazi will be in the European Parliament), Family Party, Ecological Democrats, and some outfit called Die PARTEI. The last three of these have vote totals ranging from 0.69% down to 0.63%. The NPD’s vote percentage was 1.03.

Also noteworthy is that the Free Democrats continued their slide, winning only 3.36%. They had just missed the 5% threshold for the federal Bundestag elections last year. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which also had just missed the threshold for the Bundetag won 7.04%.

No threshold for German MEPs

Apparently it is threshold day at F&V. While Israel may be raising its threshold, Germany will be dramatically lowering its. But only for its members of the European parliament (MEPs).

The Constitutional Court ruled in late February that the existing 3% threshold violated political parties’ rights to equal opportunities.

To the immediate question of why, then, the Bundestag (Germany’s elected chamber of the federal parliament) can have a 5% threshold–which was highly consequential in the most recent election–the Court has a ready answer: the role of the Bundestag is to sustain a government, and so limiting fragmentation is a valid interest. However, the European Parliament has no such role, and so it isn’t.

The SPD vote on joining German coalition

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) membership voted 76% in favor of ratifying the coalition agreement struck by its leadership with the leaders of the Christian Democratic and Christian Social Unions. They will now enter the not-so-grand coalition headed by Angela Merkel, who enters her third term as German Chancellor.

Michael Miebach, deputy director of the Progressives Zentrum think tank, quoted in the Guardian before the vote, summed it all up well:

“It looks more and more like an ingenious chess move that solves several problems at once. Instead of debating the disastrous election result or even the detail of the coalition deal, everyone’s talking about the ballot,” Miebach said. “It will keep in check party rebels who complain that they weren’t asked, and it has proved a useful tool during the negotiations with Merkel. But of course, it could still all end in disaster.”

The chances of an end in “disaster” presumably were never strong, for the reasons Miebach offers elsewhere in the quote. That did not prevent the same Guardian article from saying that a vote against “would lead to nothing short of a national crisis”. Hyperbole? We won’t get to find out.

According to the first-linked news story, at DW,

The CDU will have the chancellor and five ministers. Its sister party, the CSU, will have three ministries. The SPD will have six.

The SPD will have the Justice and Consumer Protection portfolio, which is a newly combined ministry, as well as:

the foreign ministry, a Ministry of Economic Affairs now enhanced with an energy policy mandate, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Family Affairs.

It also gets a Vice Chancellorship.

With six of 15 ministers, the SPD has 40% of the cabinet. The coalition parties control just under 80% of the seats in the Bundestag. The SPD has about 30% of the seats, which corresponds to 38% of the cabinet’s parliamentary basis. So it is represented in cabinet at very slightly above its contribution to the cabinet’s collective Bundestag representation.

How common are party membership ballots to ratify coalition agreements?

German coalition agreement

The CDU, CSU, and SPD have concluded a coalition agreement. It must be ratified by the SPD membership in a postal ballot.

My immediate reaction is that the SPD did quite well. The lack of other alternatives–the Greens had already broken off earlier talks on forming a coalition with the CDU and CSU–and the real risk that the SPD members could veto whatever deal was struck seems to have resulted in quite significant concessions from the CDU and CSU, given that the latter conservative “Union” parties were only a few seats short of a majority on their own.

The SPD gets its demand for a minimum wage of 8.50 euros, but it will still be possible through 2016 for employers and unions to agree to a lower wage. The parties compromised their positions on renewable energy targets and pension eligibility. The CSU obtained its demand for freeway tolls for vehicles registered in other countries (as long as it is consistent with EU law).

Clips of each of the three party leaders at a press conference (dubbed into English) announcing the deal are available on DW. It is noteworthy that the CSU leader speaks separately, and last of the three. We often speak of the “CDU/CSU” as if it were effectively a single party. And, in terms of not competing against each other in elections and, at least so far, not having gone into or out of government without the other, they do act almost as one. Yet it is clear that in coalition bargaining, they are separate parties. If one watches the clips, one sees the CSU leader, Horst Seehofer, specifically claim credit for achievements for his party. He mentions that the “grand coalition” was always his preference (implicitly suggesting others might have had a different preference), and he mentions concessions favorable to the states (his party is active in a single state, Bavaria), as well as the freeway-tolls deal.