Angela Merkel is from this Tuesday a functional chancellor.
The 16th anniversary of it ended with the constitution of the Bundestag emerged from the elections last September 26, after which she and the ministers of her received their respective letters of dismissal from the President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The Great Coalition will retain however active until the government formation that negotiates the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with the FDP Greens and Liberals.
These formations are willing to reach an agreement in November and start the week of December 6.
“My Thanks and my respects Chancellor Merkel for these years of work inside and outside our borders, this is the end of a chancellery that will go down in history as one of the largest in the Republic,” said Steinmeier in a farewell speech
That the honoree Chancellor listened to sitting, marking a diamond with his hands and without expressing any emotion.
The first Pos Merkel legislature started hours before a Bundestag that goes by being the most numerous in the history of Germany but with ends reserved to the government still empty, a ceremony of almost six hours that Merkel followed from the guest gallery next to Steinmeier and the
Apostolic nuncio on behalf of the diplomatic corps.
The session started turbulent, with an initiative of the parliamentary group of the alternative populist for Germany (AFD) against the decision of the outgoing President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who moderated the constituent session while the parliamentary tradition attributes that function to the
older deputy.
And the oldest is Alexander Gauland, AFD.
The initiative did not prosper as neither the election of AFD candidate Michael Kaufmann to one of the Vice-Presidencies of Bundestag, despite the fact that all parties with parliamentary representation are entitled to a vice-presidency.
The legislature starts for AFD as the previous one ended.
Three times Kaufmann was presented, the last legislature to the Vice Presidency and many others was rejected by the House.
Kaufmann comes from the Regional Group of Thuringia, led by the extremist Björn Höcke.
The Choice of SPD candidate to the Bundestag Presidency passed without setbacks.
Bärbel Bas, 53, became a wide majority in the third woman who presides over the legislative, after the Social Democrat Annemarie Renger, who did it between 1972-1976 and, from 1988 to 1989, Rita Süssmuth, from the Union
Cristianodemocrat (CDU).
BAS was a stranger until the SPD announced its nomination at the second highest charge of the state, just a week ago.
The political career of this woman born in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, has been in the shade.
At age 20 she entered the Socialist Youth (Juso), then she was signed up in the regional directive and as president of the Renano PSP executive she was made, in 2009, with her first Federal Deputy Act.
B bas only became visible during the Covid-19 crisis, when the parliamentary group of her gave him a sanitary sparkler.
Former unionist, soccer and biker lover, Bas comes from the most leftist wing of SPD, a current after elections has also become the majority of the parliamentary group.
The main exponents of him and now seatmates are the Vice President of the SPD, Saskia Esken, and the former leader of the wicked, Kevin Kühnert, who premieres as a deputy.
In the new Bundestag there are many new faces, including the president of the CDU and candidate failed to the Foreign Ministry, Armin Laschet, who resigned on Tuesday as head of the Government of North Westphalia to become a simple deputy.
Return to the legislative after 14 years of absence, Friedrich Merz, one of the opponents of Laschet by the presidency of the CDU and possible candidate for the succession of him once the party decides how to proceed on this occasion to the election.
The entrance of Laschet is the result of the electoral debacle suffered by the Set of the CDU, which has been ahead of the seats of several ministers.
That has grabbed the case of the owner of Economy, Peter Almeiner, the colleague in defense of him Annegret Kramp-Karrembauer and the Minister of the Foreign Minister and Right Hand of Merkel, Helge Braun.
In total, there will be 736 ladies and gentlemen sitting under the glass dome designed by Norman Foster to give light and transparency as it happens between the walls of the Reichtag.
There are 137 more seats than, on paper, should have the Hemicycle for its proper functioning and 248 more than those in the Federal Republic in 1953. The Bundestag does not stop growing.
It has already become the most numerous parliament in the world, in front of the Indian legislative, with the difference that Germany has 83.24 million inhabitants and India, the largest democracy of the world, 1,400 million.
This Bundestag XXL will suppose for public coffers almost 400 million euros per year plus 1,000 million that already cost the salaries of their lordships, diets, facilities, current expenses and a staff of almost 5,000 workers.
The Association of Taxpayers has already expressed its criticisms.
In principle, all matches coincide in the need to lose weight and that has been one of the tasks that Schaeuble did not manage to move forward, but none is willing to enter the electoral system, which allows direct voting access to candidates outside
of lists.
As for the composition of the new legislative there are small novelties.
It increases the number of deputies until representing 34.7% of the camera and between them there is for the first time two transgender people, both by the Green Party.
Also increases from 8.2% to 11.3% the proportion of deputies born of immigrants, although the population of foreign origin in the country is 26% and, for the satisfaction of an aged country like this, lowers the Middle Ages in the
Hemicycle, from 49.4 to 47.5 years.
The youngest deputy is Emilia Fester, 23, of the Greens and the oldest, Gauland, 80 years old.
