German election: Who are the small parties striving for votes?

Germany is a country of animal lovers: 34 million pets live with the roughly 84.5 million people here. The Human Environment Animal Protection Party mixes animal rights, which it wants enshrined in the German constitution, with social justice, calling for a universal basic income. They won 1.5% of the vote in Germany's 2021 election. Only parties that crack 5% of the votes make it into parliament.

The Freie Wähler is a grass-roots party roughly positioned between the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right populism of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Strong in rural areas of southern and eastern Germany, the Freie Wähler have two seats in the European Parliament, which doesn't have the 5% entry level requirement, and are seeking a larger role at the national level.

The German Volt was the first national branch of the centrist pan-European party to be founded in 2017. Volt's key driving factor is a stronger, more progressive and more integrated European Union — a federally-organized European superstate in which the parliament has more power. It won three seats in the European Parliament in 2024, and 0.4% of the vote in the 2021 general election in Germany.

The satirical "Party" is now a veteran of the German political scene — and has been represented in the EU parliament for the past decade in the shape of comedian and editor Martin Sonneborn, whose speeches in parliament have brought up alleged corruption. They won two seats in the 2024 European Parliament election. In the last Bundestag election, the party won just under 1% of the vote.

The regional party in Germany's northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein represents the Danish and Frisian minorities. As such it does not have to pass the 5% vote threshold to gain seats in parliament. The party participated in federal elections in Germany until 1961, before returning in 2021, when it obtained one seat. The SSW favors a strong welfare state, as well as a free-market labor policy.

Founded in Berlin in 2006 and modeled on the Swedish Piratpartiet, it is part of an international movement. Their main focus is on internet policy, data protection and privacy. The Pirates held a seat in the European Parliament from 2014 to 2024, and have seen representation in German state and local parliaments. The Pirate Party won 0.4% of the vote in the 2021 general election.

The Werteunion was founded in 2024 by members of an association claiming to represent the "core of the CDU/CSU's conservative brand." Chairman Hans-Georg Maassen is the former head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency and is well known for controversial statements sometimes judged to be right-wing extremist or conspiracy theorist.

Founded in 2020 by former CDU MP Jürgen Todenhöfer, the party won 0.5% of the vote in the 2021 Bundestag election. The party's goals include ending all foreign deployments of the German armed forces and stopping arms exports to all crisis regions. The party has been supported by organizations and people close to the Turkish government, including former German national team footballer Mesut Özil.

This party is dedicated exclusively to the promotion of bio-medical research aimed at enabling people to live healthy lives indefinitely. It argues public investment into this research would be offset by savings on medical treatments and care. The party does not want to get involved in other political issues. In the general election in 2021, it won 0.1% of the vote.