This is a list of political parties in Germany.
The Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, has a plural multi-party system, with two major parties, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) in the same parliamentary group, also known as CDU/CSU or the Union.
Furthermore, Germany has three minor parties, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), The Left, and Alliance '90/The Greens. The federal government of Germany usually consists of a coalition of a major and a minor party, most typically CDU/CSU and FDP, or a 'red-green alliance' of the SPD and Greens. From 1966 to 1969, and again from 2005 to 2009, the federal government consisted of a Grand Coalition.
Coalitions in the Bundestag and state legislators are often described by party colors. Party colors are the Social Democratic Party being red, the Alliance '90/The Greens green, the Free Democratic Party yellow, the Left dark red or purple, and the CDU/CSU black or blue.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, political, parties and/or germany:
“Shea—they call him Scholar Jack—
Went down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers—all.”
—Joseph I. C. Clarke (1846–1925)
“Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,—because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It took six weeks of debate in the Senate to get the Arms Embargo Law repealed—and we face other delays during the present session because most of the Members of the Congress are thinking in terms of next Autumn’s election. However, that is one of the prices that we who live in democracies have to pay. It is, however, worth paying, if all of us can avoid the type of government under which the unfortunate population of Germany and Russia must exist.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)