Germany's Bundestag Opens its Doors for First Session

On October 17, the German Bundestag opens its doors for the first inaugural session after the federal elections in September. The new parliament is both younger and smaller – and has more female representatives than ever before.

His main wish, Wolfgang Thierse, told a German radio station on Thursday, was that the new parliament would not turn out to be a "collection of bores."

Heated debates

Thierse, member of the Social Democrats and the former and freshly-elected President of the Bundestag for the next four year period, said shortly before the opening ceremony that he was looking forward to more "temperamental, heated and decisive debates."

And heated they are set to be. With the SPD holding 251 seats – only three more than the conservatives – Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s party faces a fierce opposition in parliament. In addition, the inaugural session is due to be overshadowed by an angry dispute over the number of vice presidents in the new Bundestag.

According to the current law, the governing party appoints the parliament's president, while each parliamentary group chooses one representative for the post of vice president, regardless of the number of seats they have. The conservatives, who gained considerably in votes and seats in the recent elections, now demand two vice president posts, which they say are in relation to the number of parliamentary seats they hold.

What may sound like a somewhat petty matter considering the political hurdles the Bundestag will face amid Germany's need for both economic and political reforms is just an example of what the red-green coalition of SPD and Greens will be up against in the coming months: "The behavior of the SPD forces us to adopt a row of measures which will make the parliamentary procedure not exactly easy for red-green," Christian Social leader Michael Glos told “Spiegel Online” on Wednesday.

Younger and smaller

But despite the squabbles over the question of vice-presidents, former leader of parliament, Wolfgang Thierse, was re-elected to his office by both the SPD and the Greens as well as the conservative opposition without much ado.

The vote was the first official decision made in the new parliament after it was officially opened by its oldest member, Interior Minister Otto Schily (SPD).

The new parliament is both younger and smaller. The current Bundestag comprises 603 seats, 53 less than in the last legislative period. The average age of its members is 49.3 years, six months younger than in the last session. This is mostly the result of the retirement of numerous decade-long members from the world of politics, among them former Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

In addition, the number of female members has risen for the seventh time in a row. Some 32.2 percent of the Bundestag's representatives are women.