President of Germany
The president of Germany, officially titled the federal president of the Federal Republic of Germany, is the head of state of Germany. The current officeholder is Frank-Walter Steinmeier who was elected on 12 February 2017 and re-elected on 13 February 2022. He is currently serving his second five-year-term, which began on 19 March 2022.
Under the 1949 constitution Germany has a parliamentary system of government in which the chancellor is the head of government. The president has a ceremonial role as figurehead, but also has the right and duty to act politically. They can give direction to general political and societal debates and have some important "reserve powers" in case of political instability. The president also holds the prerogative to grant pardons on behalf of the federation. The German presidents, who can be elected to two consecutive five-year terms, have wide discretion about how they exercise their official duties.
Under Article 59 of the Basic Law, the president represents the Federal Republic of Germany in matters of international law, concludes treaties with foreign states on its behalf and accredits diplomats. Furthermore, all federal laws must be signed by the president before they can come into effect; presidents may veto a law if they believe it to violate the constitution.
The president's actions and public appearances represent the state itself, its existence, legitimacy, and unity. The president enjoys a higher ranking at official functions than the chancellor. The president's role is integrative and includes the control function of upholding the law and the constitution. It is a matter of political tradition – not legal restrictions – that the president generally does not comment routinely on issues in the news, particularly when there is some controversy among the political parties. This distance from day-to-day politics and daily governmental issues allows the president to be a source of clarification, to influence public debate, voice criticism, offer suggestions, and make proposals. In order to exercise this power, they traditionally act above party politics.
Election
The president is elected for a term of five years by secret ballot, without debate, by a specially convened Federal Convention which mirrors the aggregated majority position in the Bundestag and in the parliaments of the 16 German states. The convention consists of all Bundestag members, as well as an equal number of electors elected by the state legislatures in proportion to their respective populations. Since reunification, all Federal Conventions have had more than 1200 members, as the Bundestag has always had more than 600 parliamentarians since then. It is not required that state electors are chosen from the members of the state legislature; often some prominent citizens are chosen.The German constitution, the Basic Law, requires that the convention be convened no later than 30 days before the scheduled expiry of the sitting president's term or 30 days after a premature expiry of a president's term. The body is convened and chaired by the president of the Bundestag. From 1979 to 2009, all these conventions were held on 23 May, the anniversary of the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949. The resignation of Horst Köhler in 2010, which necessitated an early meeting of the Federal Convention, brought this tradition to an end.
In the first two rounds of the election, the candidate who achieves an absolute majority is elected. If, after two votes, no single candidate has received this level of support, in the third and final vote the candidate who wins a plurality of votes cast is elected.
The result of the election is often determined by party politics. In most cases, the candidate of the majority party or coalition in the Bundestag is considered to be the likely winner. However, as the members of the Federal Convention vote by secret ballot and are free to vote against their party's candidate, some presidential elections were considered open or too close to call beforehand because of relatively balanced majority positions or because the governing coalition's parties could not agree on one candidate and endorsed different people, as they did in 1969, when Gustav Heinemann won by only six votes on the third ballot. In other cases, elections have turned out to be much closer than expected. For example, in 2010, Wulff was expected to win on the first ballot, as the parties supporting him had a stable absolute majority in the Federal Convention. Nevertheless, he failed to win a majority in the first and second ballots, while his main opponent Joachim Gauck had an unexpectedly strong showing. In the end, Wulff obtained a majority in the third ballot. If the opposition has turned in a strong showing in state elections, it can potentially have enough support to defeat the chancellor's party's candidate; this happened in the elections in 1979 and 2004. For this reason, presidential elections can indicate the result of an upcoming general election. According to a long-standing adage in German politics, "if you can create a President, you can form a government."
List of elections
Qualifications
The office of president is open to all Germans who are entitled to vote in Bundestag elections and have reached the age of 40, but no one may serve more than two consecutive five-year terms. As yet, only five presidents have been elected for a second term and only two of them completed those terms, while Lübke and Köhler resigned during their second term. The president must not be a member of the federal government or of a legislature at either the federal or state level.Oath
After taking office the president must take the following oath, stipulated by Article 56 of the Basic Law, in a joint session of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. The religious references may optionally be omitted.I swear that I will dedicate my efforts to the well-being of the German people, promote their welfare, protect them from harm, uphold and defend the Basic Law and the laws of the Federation, perform my duties conscientiously and do justice to all.
German constitutional law does not consider oaths of office as constitutive but only as affirmative. This means that the president does not have to take the oath at the moment of entering office in order to be able to exercise its constitutional powers. In practice, the oath is usually administered during the first days or weeks of a president's term on a date convenient for a joint session of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. Nevertheless, in theory a persistent refusal to take the oath is considered to be an impeachable offence by legal scholars. If a president is re-elected for a second consecutive term, he does not take the oath again.
Duties and functions
The president is involved in the formation of the Federal Government and remains in close cooperation with it. Basically, the president is free to act on his own discretion. However, according to Article 58 of the German constitution, the decrees, and directives of the president require the countersignature of the chancellor or the corresponding federal minister in charge of the respective field of politics. This rule ensures the coherence of government action, similar to the system of checks and balances in the United States. There is no need for a countersignature if the president proposes, appoints, or dismisses the chancellor; convenes or dissolves the Bundestag according to Article 63; declares a legislative state of emergency; calls on a chancellor and ministers to remain in office after the end of a chancellor's term until a successor is elected; or exercises his right to pardon on behalf of the federation - as these are exclusive powers of the president.Therefore, the president also receives the chancellor regularly for talks on current policy issues. German presidents also hold talks with individual federal ministers and other senior officials at their own discretion. The "Head of the Office of the President" represents the will and views of the president in the meetings of the Federal Cabinet and reports back to the president.
The president's most prominent powers and duties include:
- Proposing the chancellor to the Bundestag
- Appointing and dismissing the chancellor and their cabinet ministers
- Dissolving the Bundestag under certain circumstances
- Declaring the legislative state of emergency under certain circumstances
- Convening the Bundestag
- Signing and promulgating laws or vetoing them under certain circumstances
- Appointing and dismissing federal judges, federal civil servants, and commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the Armed Forces
- Exercising the power to pardon individual offenders on behalf of the Federation
- Awarding honors on behalf of the Federation
- Representing Germany at home and abroad
Appointment of the Federal Government
If the Bundestag cannot elect anyone with a majority in the 14-day period, it is required to hold one final ballot. If a person is elected with a majority on this ballot, the president is once again obliged to appoint them. If there is no majority, the president has seven days to either appoint the person who received a plurality of votes on the final ballot or dissolve the Bundestag.
The chancellor may only be removed if the Bundestag passes a constructive vote of no confidence, indicating that a prospective new chancellor has the support of a majority. The president is then required to dismiss the chancellor and appoint the new candidate.
The president also appoints and dismisses the remaining members of the federal government upon proposal of the chancellor. This theoretically means that the president can appoint only those candidates presented by the chancellor. It is unclear whether the president could refuse to dismiss or appoint a proposed federal minister, as no president has ever done so.
The constitution places no restrictions on who may be chancellor. In practice, the president only proposes a person as chancellor who has previously garnered a majority support in prior coalition talks and traditionally does not interfere in those talks. However, after the "Jamaica coalition" talks failed in the wake of the 2017 election, President Steinmeier invited several Bundestag party leaders to try to bring them together to form a working government.