CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag

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CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag
–CDU/CSU parliamentary group–
logo
Ralph Brinkhaus
faction leader Ralph Brinkhaus
First Deputy Chairman, Chairman of the CSU regional group Alexander Dobrindt
1. Parliamentary Secretary Thorsten Frei
Vice President of the Bundestag Yvonne Magwas
founding September 01, 1949
place of incorporation Bonn
alignment opposition
MPs
197/736
average age 49.3 years (as of October 01, 2021)
proportion of women 23.5% (as of October 01, 2021)
site https://www.cducsu.de/
CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag , 2014

The CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag ( CDU/CSU Bundestag parliamentary group or Union parliamentary group for short ) is the common parliamentary group of the sister parties CDU and CSU , often referred to as Union parties , in the German Bundestag . The parliamentary group is chaired by Ralph Brinkhaus . The first deputy chairman is Alexander Dobrindt , who is also chairman of the CSU state group . Eleven other Vice-Chairs are responsible for specific areas of work. The function of the First Parliamentary Secretary Thorsten Frei is the head of the parliamentary group . Spokesman for the parliamentary group and head of the communications department is Bülend Ürük.

In the current 20th electoral term , the CDU/CSU parliamentary group is the second largest parliamentary group in the German Bundestag with 197 MPs. 152 MPs belong to the CDU and 45 to the Bavarian CSU.

The parliamentary group of the CDU and CSU is a special feature of the parliamentary system in the Federal Republic of Germany. In it, the deputies of two independent parties join together to form a common parliamentary group. The merger is possible primarily because the two parties do not compete against each other in any federal state. Since 1949, the CSU has only been up for election in Bavaria and the CDU in all other federal states. After 16 of a total of 20 federal elections since 1949, the CDU and CSU made up the strongest parliamentary group in the German Bundestag.

organization

Meeting room of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Reichstag building

The parliamentary group leader leads the parliamentary group and represents it internally and externally. He convenes parliamentary group and board meetings, proposes agendas and chairs the parliamentary group in the plenary session of the German Bundestag.

The executive committee of the parliamentary group consists of the parliamentary group leader, his deputies, the parliamentary directors , the legal advisors and the spokesman for the CDU regional groups. The parliamentary group board also includes the chairmen of the 24 working groups, the six sociological groups (women's group, working group on local politics, employee group, parliamentary group for small and medium-sized businesses, group of expellees, resettlers and German minorities, young group) and 15 assessors. Both bodies usually meet on Mondays.

The deputies of the CSU are united in their own state group , which is integrated as an independent organizational unit in the entire parliamentary group. Group members from the 15 other federal states are also organized as state groups. In addition, the parliamentary group leader can appoint officers for individual subject areas. There are currently five officers: for climate protection, for the maritime economy, for churches and religious communities, for people with disabilities and for integration .

The faction community of the CDU and CSU must be renewed at the beginning of each legislative period. For this purpose, an “Agreement on the continuation of the CDU and CSU parliamentary group community” is concluded at the first meeting of the parliamentary group after a Bundestag election and signed by the party chairmen. The document states that “each group is the representative of an independent party”. The CDU and CSU are represented “according to their relative strengths” in the parliamentary group executive committee as well as in the working groups and the committees and delegations to be filled by the parliamentary group.

The assembly of all members of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group is referred to as a parliamentary group assembly. It meets at least once in each session week - usually on Tuesday - and decides on the policy of the parliamentary group in the German Bundestag.

The 24 working groups of the parliamentary group reflect the committees set up by the German Bundestag and thus essentially reflect the departmental structure of the federal government. Members of the working groups are therefore all MPs who are also full members or deputy members of the relevant committees. The chairmen of the working groups are elected by the parliamentary group, with the CDU part of the parliamentary group and the CSU state group having their own right to nominate the positions to be filled by them. The board that deliberates on the composition of the committees is informally referred to as the "committee committee" or "carpet dealers round".

Choose

The parliamentary group leader was elected at the constituent parliamentary group meeting on September 28, 2021. His term of office initially runs until April 30, 2022. On the same day, the CSU state group also elected its chairman and first deputy chairman of the parliamentary group, as well as the parliamentary manager of the CSU state group and at the same time deputy of the first parliamentary manager of the parliamentary group. It was also decided to continue the faction community. The other members of the executive board and the working group chairs were elected at the parliamentary group meeting on December 13, 2021.

story

As early as August 1946, the CDU and CSU founded a joint working group , which consisted of a board of nine members and a plenum with 21 delegates. Both in the Economic Council formed in 1947 and in the Parliamentary Council in 1948/49 there were joint factions of the CDU and CSU.

After the first federal elections in August 1949, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group was formed on September 1, 1949 in the building of the Bonn citizens' association . The leader of the CDU in the British zone, Konrad Adenauer , was elected group leader. After his election as Federal Chancellor on September 15, 1949, Heinrich von Brentano took over the office of parliamentary group leader.

When Heinrich von Brentano became foreign minister in 1955, Heinrich Krone succeeded him as parliamentary group leader. Krone was considered one of Adenauer's closest political confidants. The 1957 Bundestag elections also took place during his term of office , in which the CDU and CSU for the first and only time won an absolute majority with 50.2 percent of the votes and 277 of the 519 Bundestag deputies. After the federal elections in 1961 , in which the Union lost its absolute majority again, but had again become by far the strongest faction, Krone moved to the office of Federal Minister for Special Tasks. Heinrich von Brentano again became chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. After von Brentano became seriously ill in the fall of 1963, the former Federal Minister for all-German issues , Rainer Barzel , took over the duties of parliamentary group leader and was elected to this post after Brentano's death in December 1964.

Although the Union parties had again become the strongest parliamentary group in the Bundestag elections in 1969 with 46.1 percent of the votes, they did not nominate the Federal Chancellor for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic due to the formation of a coalition of SPD and FDP . Due to the disputes about Ostpolitik , the CDU/CSU parliamentary group grew from initially 250 to 258 MPs over the course of the legislative period through defections from the coalition parties. In April 1972, a constructive vote of no confidence by Rainer Barzel against Chancellor Willy Brandt narrowly failed. As it later turned out, bribes from the East German Ministry for State Security played an important role. In the early federal elections in 1972 , the CDU and CSU came out weaker with 44.9 percent than the SPD with 45.8 percent. In May 1973, Barzel resigned from the post of group leader. There were three candidates for the successor, with Karl Carstens clearly prevailing on May 17, 1973 with 131 votes against the later Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker (58 votes) and the former Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder (26 votes).

After the 1976 Bundestag elections , in which the CDU and CSU were unable to achieve a change of government despite a share of the vote of 48.6 percent, Carstens was elected President of the German Bundestag. The previous candidate for chancellor and Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Helmut Kohl , took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group . On November 19, 1976 , the CSU state group decided at a conference in Wildbad Kreuth to dissolve the faction community with the CDU. The decision was withdrawn a few weeks later.

Helmut Kohl retained the post of parliamentary group leader after the CDU and CSU lost the 1980 federal elections with Chancellor candidate Franz Josef Strauss . After Kohl was elected chancellor by the new coalition of CDU/CSU and FDP in October 1982, the long-standing leader of the Hessian CDU , Alfred Dregger , took over the leadership of the parliamentary group. In the early Bundestag elections on March 6, 1983 , the CDU/CSU narrowly missed out on the absolute majority of seats with 48.8 percent of the votes and made up 255 of the 520 members of the Bundestag.

After reunification on October 3, 1990, there was a CDU/CSU/DSU parliamentary group, which consisted of eight members of the DSU , until the newly elected Bundestag was constituted on December 2, 1990 . In November 1991, the previous Federal Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble , was elected to succeed Dregger as the new chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Schäuble retained this post after the CDU and CSU clearly lost the 1998 federal election and had to switch to the opposition for the second time since 1949. In the course of the party donation scandal, he resigned from his positions as parliamentary group and party leader in February 2000. His previous deputy , Friedrich Merz , was elected to succeed him as parliamentary group leader. After the 2002 Bundestag elections , in which the CDU/CSU narrowly lost to the SPD, the party leader of the CDU, Angela Merkel , took over this office.

When Merkel was elected the first female Chancellor in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany in November 2005, her close confidante, the former CDU General Secretary Volker Kauder , moved to the post of parliamentary group leader. At twelve years and ten months, Kauder held the chairmanship longer than any of his predecessors. Victory in the Bundestag elections on September 22, 2013 fell during his term of office, when the CDU/CSU again just missed out on the absolute majority of seats in the Bundestag with 41.5 percent of the votes and 311 MPs. In the 2017 federal election , the Union won 246 seats and was again by far the strongest parliamentary group. However, the result of 32.9 percent of the votes was widely felt to be disappointing.

A few weeks before the regular election of the parliamentary group leader, one year after the general election, Deputy Chairman Ralph Brinkhaus surprisingly announced his candidacy. In the election on September 25, 2018, Brinkhaus prevailed against Kauder with 125 to 112 votes (52.7 to 47.3 percent) and has led the CDU/CSU parliamentary group since then.

In March 2021, Georg Nüßlein (CSU) and Nikolas Löbel (CDU) declared their resignation from the parliamentary group in the course of a corruption affair about the procurement of masks , and Mark Hauptmann on suspicion of taking advantage. Löbel later announced his immediate resignation as a member of parliament and resigned from the CDU, while Nüßlein only resigned from the CSU and wants to keep his member of parliament. Hauptmann also resigned as a member of parliament. Union politicians Kordula Kovac and Kristina Nordt replaced Löbel and Hauptmann .

national groups

national group chairman Members
2021
Baden-Wuerttemberg Andrew Young 33
Bavaria Alexander Dobrindt 45
Berlin Thomas Heilman 5
Brandenburg Jens Koeppen 4
Bremen Thomas Roewekamp 1
Hamburg Christopher Ploss 3
Hesse Michael Brand 12
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Philip Amthor 3
Lower Saxony Matthias Middelberg 18
North Rhine-Westphalia Gunter Krings 42
Rhineland-Palatinate Patrick Schnieder 9
Saarland Nadine beautiful 2
Saxony Carsten Koerber 7
Saxony-Anhalt Sepp Mueller 4
Schleswig Holstein Johann Wadephul 6
Thuringia Christian Shepherd 3


faction board

Executive Board

Surname position field of activity Political party
Ralph Brinkhaus chairman — CDU
Alexander Dobrindt First Deputy Chairman,
Chairman of the CSU regional group		 — CSU
Dorothee Baer vice-chairman Family , Seniors, Women and Youth, Culture and Media CSU
Steffen Bilger Deputy Chairman Food and Agriculture , Environment , Conservation , Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection CDU
Hermann Grohe Deputy Chairman Labor and Social Affairs , Employees, Economic Cooperation and Development CDU
Ulrich Lange Deputy Chairman Transport, housing, urban development, construction CSU
Andrea Lindholz vice-chairman Law and interior, expellees, resettlers and German minorities CSU
Patricia Lips vice-chairman European policy, European coordination, parliamentary cooperation in Europe, Brussels liaison office, EPP group, human rights CDU
Matthias Middelberg Deputy Chairman Budget , finance , local politics CDU
Sepp Mueller Deputy Chairman Health , new countries, sports and voluntary work, petitions CDU
Nadine beautiful vice-chairman Education and research, digital CDU
Jens Spahn Deputy Chairman Economy, climate and energy, medium-sized companies, tourism CDU
Johann Wadephul Deputy Chairman Foreign Affairs, Defence, Interparliamentary Conference on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), Council of Europe CDU
Thorsten Frei First Parliamentary Secretary — CDU
Stefan Mueller Deputy of the first parliamentary manager,
parliamentary manager of the CSU regional group		 — CSU
Henrik Hoppenstedt Parliamentary Secretary — CDU
Patrick Schnieder Parliamentary Secretary — CDU
Nina Warken Parliamentary Secretary — CDU
Ansgar Heveling General Counsel — CDU
Michael Frieser General Counsel — CSU

Chairmen of the working groups or spokespersons or representatives

Surname Area
Christian Hase household
Gero Storjohann petitions
Anja Weisgerber Environment , conservation , nuclear safety and consumer protection
Stephen Mayer sports and volunteering
Albert Stegeman food and agriculture
Reinhard Brandl digital
Thomas Bareiß traffic
Anja Karliczek tourism
Alexander Trom inside and home
Andrew Young climate protection and energy
Jurgen Hardt foreign
Florian Hahn defense
Julia Kloeckner business
Volkmar Klein economical co-operation and Development
Thomas Jarzombek education and research
Stephan Stracke work and social affairs
Tiny concern Bless you
Michael Brand human rights and humanitarian aid
Gunther Krichbaum European policy
Antje Tilmann finance
Christian Schenderlein culture and media
Silvia Breher family , seniors, women and youth
Gunter Krings law
Jan Marco Luczak Housing, urban development, construction and municipalities

The last general election took place on December 13, 2021.

Presidents of the sociological groups

Surname group choice
Ronja Kemer young group November 10, 2021
Christopher de Vries Group of displaced persons, resettlers and German minorities October 25, 2021
André Berghegger Working group on local politics
Mechthild Heil group of women December 16, 2021
Christian Freiherr von Stetten Middle class parliamentary group September 29, 2021
Axel Knoerig worker group September 30, 2021

expert speaker

Surname Area
Mark Helfrich energy policy
Thomas Rachel churches and religious communities
Roderich Kiesewetter crisis prevention
Philip Amthor State organization and state modernization
Henning Otte Rural area
Volker Ullrich consumer protection
Thomas Silberhorn Transatlantic Relations

faction leader

Ralph Brinkhaus Volker Kauder Angela Merkel Friedrich Merz Wolfgang Schäuble Alfred Dregger Helmut Kohl Karl Carstens Rainer Barzel Heinrich von Brentano Heinrich Krone Heinrich von Brentano Konrad Adenauer

All previous parliamentary group leaders were members of the CDU.

literature

itemizations

  1. ↑ Average age in the Bundestag. Bundestag, September 29, 2021, retrieved October 1, 2021 .
  2. ^ Proportion of women in the Bundestag. Bundestag, September 29, 2021, retrieved October 1, 2021 .
  3. ↑ Results - The Federal Returning Officer. Retrieved September 28, 2021 .
  4. ↑ Sönke Petersen: Manager of Parliament: Parliamentary Managers in the German Bundestag - status, function, working methods . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-93222-8 , p. 124 ( google.de [accessed December 10, 2021]).
  5. ↑ Ralph Brinkhaus re-elected chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  6. ↑ CDU/CSU parliamentary group has elected new executive board and working group chairmen. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  7. ↑ CDU/CSU parliamentary group has elected new executive board and working group chairmen. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  8. ↑ FOCUS Online: CDU man Löbel wants to resign from the Bundestag after the mask scandal – but only at the end of August. Retrieved March 8, 2021 .
  9. ↑ CDU/CSU: Georg Nüßlein resigns from the Union parliamentary group. In: The Time . March 7, 2021, retrieved March 8, 2021 .
  10. ↑ Lobby affair: CDU MP Mark Hauptmann resigns from the Bundestag. In: The Time . 11 March 2021, retrieved 11 March 2021 .
  11. ↑ DER SPIEGEL: Corona mask affair: Nikolas Löbel (CDU) resigns from the Bundestag. Retrieved March 8, 2021 .
  12. ↑ Timo Frasch, Munich: Mask affair: Nüßlein resigns from the CSU . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed 8 March 2021]).
  13. ↑ CDU/CSU parliamentary group has elected new executive board and working group chairmen. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  14. ↑ Ronja Kemmer elected as the new Chair of the Young Group. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  15. ↑ Christoph de Vries elected new chairman of the group of displaced persons, resettlers and German minorities. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  16. ↑ Yvonne Magwas re-elected as Chair of Women's Group. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  17. ↑ Christian von Stetten re-elected as PKM chairman. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .
  18. ↑ Workers' group elects Axel Knoerig as chairman. Retrieved December 14, 2021 .

web links

Commons : CDU/CSU parliamentary group  - collection of images, videos and audio files