Бавария Жерлік Парламенті

Legislature of the state of Bavaria, Germany

The Landtag of Bavaria, officially known in English as the Bavarian State Parliament, is the unicameral legislature of the German state of Bavaria. The parliament meets in the Maximilianeum in Munich. Elections to the Landtag are held every five years and have to be conducted on a Sunday or public holiday. The following elections have to be held no earlier than 59 months and no later than 62 months after the previous one, unless the Landtag is dissolved. The most recent elections to the Bavarian Landtag were held on 8 October 2023. Bavaria's current state government, the third Söder cabinet, was formed after the 2023 election and is a coalition of the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Free Voters (FW). An identical coalition was in power as the second Söder cabinet between 2018 and 2023. Markus Söder has been Minister President of Bavaria since March 2018, when he succeeded Horst Seehofer.

The Landtag of Bavaria was founded in 1818, in the Kingdom of Bavaria. The first assembly was held on 4 February 1819. Originally it was called the Ständeversammlung and was divided into an upper house, the Kammer der Reichsräte (House of Councillors), and a lower house, the lt=Kammer der Abgeordneten (House of Representatives). With the act to reform the election of the representatives in 1848 the Ständeversammlung was de facto renamed the Landtag (state diet). The name Landtag was used occasionally before this act. In the Weimar Republic, from 1919 on, under the Bamberg Constitution [de], the upper house of the Landtag was abolished and its lower house became a unicameral democratic elected assembly. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the Landtag underwent Gleichschaltung like all German state parliaments. It was dissolved on 30 January 1934 as a result of the "Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich". After the Second World War, the new Constitution of Bavaria was enacted and the first new Landtag elections took place on 1 December 1946. Between 1946 and 1999 there was again an upper house, the Senate of Bavaria. The CSU has dominated the Bavarian Landtag for nearly the entire post war period. The CSU's 2003 election victory was the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany that any party had won a two thirds majority of seats in an assembly at any level. Five years later in 2008, the CSU saw a stunning reversal of fortunes, and failed to win a majority of seats in Bavaria for the first time in 46 years. In the aftermath of this result, the SPD floated the idea that the four other parties should all unite to form a government excluding the CSU, as it had "lost its mandate to lead": however, the FDP were not interested, and opted to form a coalition with the CSU.