Parties
Pursuant to Section 2 of the Law on Political Parties, parties are associations of citizens
which set out to exert influence either permanently or for longer periods of time on the formation
of the political will at federal or Land level and participate in the representation of the people
in the German Bundestag or a Land parliament, provided that they offer sufficient guarantee of the
sincerity of their aims in the general character of their circumstances and attendant conditions,
particularly with regard to the size and strength of their organization, the number of inscribed
members and their conduct in public. Their internal organization must be in line with democratic
principles. Only natural persons may be members of a party.
Political parties are freely established associations of persons. Generally, they are
organised as associations without legal capacity on the basis of civil law and in keeping with the
legal provisions governing associations contained in the Civil Code. For a political party to be
founded as an association with legal capacity, that party additionally has to be entered in the
Register of Associations. More detailed information on the subject is provided by the Registration
Courts.
An association shall lose its legal status as a party if for a period of six years it has
failed to participate in either a Bundestag election or an election to a Land parliament with a
list of candidates of its own.
Political associations are not deemed to be parties if the majority of their members or the
majority of their executive committee members are aliens or if their headquarters or registered
seats of business are located outside the purview of the Law on Political Parties.
Pursuant to Section 6 (3) of the Law on Political Parties, the executive committee of a party
must inform the Federal Returning Officer of the party’s statutes and program, the names of the
party’s executive committee members and the regional branches, stating their duties, the
dissolution of the party or of a regional branch. For the parties and political associations which
have filed party documents with the Federal Returning Officer please refer to our website at:
parteien_downloads.html.
The filing of the documents does not, however, automatically entail the recognition of the
association as a political party or establish any right of admission to elections.
Prior to every Bundestag election, the Federal Electoral Committee shall establish, for all
electoral bodies and not later than the seventy-second day before the election, which political
associations shall be recognized as parties because only parties may submit Land lists for
Bundestag elections.
The party privilege laid down in Article 21 of the Basic Law protects political parties as
regards their existence and their activities; parties may be prohibited only by the Federal
Constitutional Court.
Legal bases:
Article 21 of the Basic Law (GG); Sections 2, 6 of the Law on Political Parties (PartG),
Section 18 (4) no. 2 of the Federal Elections Act (BWG)
Last update: March 2008
©2012 The Federal Returning Officer
