Berlin hour

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Berliner hour is the total duration of speaking times in the German Bundestag , which are limited according to the proportion of members of the parliament, at plenary sessions or committees such as the committee of inquiry . The distribution of speaking time is mutually agreed between the parliamentary groups in the Bundestag. In the 19th electoral period (since October 2017) the following distribution applies: 21 minutes for CDU / CSU , 13 minutes for the SPD , seven minutes each for AfD and FDP , six minutes for the Greens and four minutes for Die Linke .

The debate in the plenary session in Bonn had 68 minutes so that the ratio of strengths between the groups can also be taken into account in the speaking time and still leave enough room for the presentation of their own position even for small groups . That had already happened before the government and opposition moved to Berlin , and that is why these 68 minutes are traditionally called the Bonn hour : The two coalition factions of the SPD and the Greens had 35 minutes of one hour speaking time, the CDU / CSU 21, the FDP 7 and the PDS 5 minutes.

When the 15th German Bundestag was constituted in November 2002, the Bonn Hour was reformed . Since the PDS could no longer move into this Bundestag as a parliamentary group, the speaking time was redistributed. The regulation that has now emerged led to the Berlin hour from now on only 62 minutes of speaking time. The originally planned "real" hour did not materialize because this regulation would have meant only five minutes of speaking time for the FDP faction and would therefore have been too short for two speakers. One speaker at a time brings i. d. R. the arguments before and the second answered the objections of the other groups. With the entry of the Left Party PDS as a parliamentary group into the 16th German Bundestag, the parts of the speech were redistributed again, but with a total duration of 62 minutes, so that the current regulation came into effect.

When distributing speaking times, all members of the Bundestag, Federal Government and Bundesrat are treated equally. This means, for example, that the speaking time allocated to the SPD in the plenary session is counted towards all requests to speak from SPD members as well as from SPD ministers or SPD prime ministers.

see also: Viennese hour

literature

  • Susanne Linn, Frank Sobolewski: This is how the German Bundestag works. Organization and way of working. Federal legislation . 23rd edition. Neue Darmstädter Verlagsgesellschaft, Rheinbreitbach 2010, ISBN 978-3-87576-639-4 , p. 47 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chapter 7.11 Regulations on the duration of the debate. In: data manual. German Bundestag, March 26, 2020, p. 3 , accessed on July 10, 2020 .
  2. ^ Susanne Strasser, Frank Sobolewski: This is how the German Bundestag works. Organization and way of working. Federal legislation . Neue Darmstädter Verlagsgesellschaft, Rheinbreitbach 2018, ISBN 978-3-95879-087-2 , p. 64 ( btg-bestellservice.de [PDF; 834 kB ; accessed on January 15, 2019]).