Mediation Committee

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Committee meeting room in the Bundesrat building in Berlin, where u. a. the mediation committee meets.

The Mediation Committee (committee according to Article 77, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law ) is a joint body of the German Bundestag and the Bundesrat . The “ Joint Rules of Procedure of the Bundestag and Bundesrat for the Committee under Article 77 of the Basic Law ” regulate its organization and procedure . The committee consists of 16 members each from the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. The members sent by the Bundestag are elected by parliament according to the proportion of the parliamentary groups (strength of the parliamentary groups for the duration of one legislative period ). The 16 members sent by the Federal Council each represent a country and are appointed by the respective state government. According to Article 77 (2) of the Basic Law, the members of the mediation committee are not bound by instructions. The vote does not take place separately in the Bundesrat and Bundestag, but in plenary . There is no minimum or maximum time until a decision (whether positive or negative) is reached.

tasks

The task of the mediation committee is to mediate in the event of disagreements in the legislative process between the Bundestag and Bundesrat. According to the Federal Constitutional Court , it should endeavor to bring a specific legislative procedure to a positive result by avoiding an objection by the Federal Council or obtaining the necessary Federal Council approval for a legislative resolution. To this end, an agreement between the Bundestag and Bundesrat, in particular in the form of a compromise, is to be found in the committee.

This mediation work is particularly necessary if a law passed by the Bundestag requires the approval of the Bundesrat ( Approval Act ) and this law is not approved by a majority. This situation occurs especially when there are different political majorities in the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Furthermore, the Federal Council must request that the Mediation Committee be called upon if it is considering objecting to a law that has been passed and does not require its approval. If, on the other hand, it is a law of consent, the Bundestag and the Federal Government can also request that the meeting be convened.

Mediation result

The Mediation Committee can make a recommendation to the Bundestag and Bundesrat on how to resolve the conflict. Such a recommendation can be passed with a simple majority, with each committee member having one vote. However, this recommendation must then be accepted by both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. As a rule, if the mediation committee recommends a majority (so-called spurious mediation result), this recommendation will fail in one of the two chambers. Real mediation results, however, are achieved when the mediation committee almost unanimously approves the recommendation. In this case there will also be a majority in the Bundestag and Bundesrat.

Composition of the Bundestag bank in the mediation committee

In contrast to the 16 representatives of the Bundesrat - who each represent a federal state - the bank of the German Bundestag is composed in the mediation committee according to the mirror image principle, which is binding for the composition of the committees of the Bundestag and laid down in the rules of procedure - that is, the strengths of the parliamentary groups (or the success values ​​of the MPs, which is a different benchmark) must be as equal as possible. A deviation from the requirement of mirror images can only be justified in order to reflect the majority principle, as long as an attempt is made to create a gentle balance between these two constitutional principles.

A political issue has been the subject, as the red-green majority in the Bundestag after the 2002 elections for the first time instead of a distribution of seats decided in accordance with the strength of the political groups that the strongest group (the SPD should) get an extra seat. This gave the SPD 8 and the Union 6 seats, although both had received 38.5% of the vote in the election. In a ruling of December 8, 2004, the Federal Constitutional Court demanded a new decision by the Bundestag on the procedure for allocating seats in the mediation committee. Due to the premature dissolution of the Bundestag in July 2005, there was no longer any new regulation .

In the 17th electoral term (2009–2013) the same problem arose again with the opposite sign. After the departure of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Julia Klöckner , for whom there were no successors because of the overhang , neither the standard distribution to Sainte-Laguë nor the one used as a substitute for the majority after D'Hondt had a majority for the coalition of Union and FDP surrender. Compared to the adopted method of allocating seats, the Union now had one seat too many and the Greens one too few.

On July 5, 2011, Peter Altmaier , the then parliamentary managing director of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group, assured the Greens that a member of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in the mediation committee would no longer take part in votes until a final settlement was reached. On June 27, 2012, the Bundestag elected Britta Haßelmann (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) to replace the CDU politician Helmut Brandt, who was leaving the mediation committee . Since then, the black-yellow coalition on the Bundestag bench of the mediation committee no longer had a majority, but the mirror image was fulfilled.

If the mediation committee forms committees or working groups, these do not have to be mirror images, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on September 22, 2015. The Left Party wanted to work on the Hartz IV issue in 2011 , but was not involved in the working group formed. The Federal Constitutional Court judged this to be legal as long as it is ensured that all members can participate in the final vote in the mediation committee. The work of the committees and working groups is therefore only informal, seeking a compromise and not making decisions. Peter Müller , who was involved in the exclusion of the Left Party during his time as Saarland CDU Prime Minister, did not take part in the court proceedings as a constitutional judge.

In the 18th electoral period (2013–2017) the Bundestag bank of the mediation committee was filled as follows: CDU / CSU 7, SPD 5, Die Linke 2, Greens 2.

In the current 19th electoral term (since October 2017), the Bundestag bank of the mediation committee was filled as follows: CDU / CSU 6, SPD 3, AfD 2, FDP 2, Die Linke 2, Greens 1.

Members

Members of the German Bundestag (19th electoral term)

CDU / CSU:

SPD:

AfD:

FDP:

The left:

Greens:

Members of the Federal Council

criticism

Critics accuse the establishment of the Mediation Committee, non-transparent, for the citizens to blend state, federal and party interests not comprehensible manner. If the citizen can no longer understand political responsibilities, so the critics, he can not make competent decisions in the election . The Conciliation Committee continues to be accused of leading to inadequate, "lazy" compromises and "reforms" where clear decisions and clear policy changes are required. Ultimately, such criticisms question the state of German federalism , the proliferation of laws requiring approval, and mixed responsibilities between the federal and state governments. Therefore, the role and structure of the mediation committee also played an important role in the reform debate within the Federalism Commission . In the proposals last discussed there, however, a solution was not attempted by reforming the Mediation Committee itself, but by curbing the need for approval of laws.

The Mediation Committee has no right of initiative , so it is not entitled to make legislative proposals itself. It is currently particularly controversial to what extent the mediation committee exceeded its competencies when it changed the 2004 budget support law in the mediation process. It is controversial here whether the relevant changes that were made to the draft law had previously been sufficiently discussed in the Bundestag. In terms of content, it is about the subsidy cuts according to the proposals of Prime Ministers Roland Koch (Hesse, CDU) and Peer Steinbrück (North Rhine-Westphalia, SPD) (incorporation of the so-called Koch / Steinbrück list ).

On February 14, 2019, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on the 2004 amendments to the Beer Tax Act, the Income Tax Act and the 1999 Corporate Income Tax Act that their coming into being was not constitutional because the mediation committee exceeded its powers in reformulating a compromise. However, the judgment had no further consequences due to later confirmations or new regulations.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ BVerfG: judgment of December 8, 2004 - Az. 2 BvE 3/02 , full text (Rn. 58).
  2. ↑ BT-Drs. 15/17
  3. ↑ BVerfG, judgment of December 8, 2004 , Az. 2 BvE 3/02, full text.
  4. ↑ Review of the work of the Committee on Election Review, Immunity and Rules of Procedure (1st committee) in the 15th electoral term (page 4 f.)
  5. ↑ German Bundestag, printed matter 17/4 (PDF; 45 kB)
  6. ↑ Stenographic report of the 119th session of the German Bundestag (PDF; 1.0 MB), July 6, 2011 (Annexes 2 and 3, page 13841 f.)
  7. ↑ Stenographic report of the 186th session of the German Bundestag (PDF; 1.0 MB), June 27, 2012 (page 22221)
  8. ↑ Tagesschau on the judgment of the BVG from September 22, 2015 ( Memento from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ German Bundestag: Members of the Mediation Committee ( Memento from March 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ^ Mediation Committee - Members of the Bundestag. Accessed January 31, 2019 .
  11. ↑ BVerfG, judgment of January 15, 2008 , Az. 2 BvL 12/01, full text.
  12. ↑ Federal Constitutional Court - Press - Changes to tax laws due to deficiencies in the legislative process are unconstitutional. Retrieved February 14, 2019 .