German parliament has a diversity problem

Luke Hoss is the name of the man who is set to become the youngest member of the new Bundestag. At just 23 years old, he's in the unusual position of being a Left Party politician in the arch-conservative town of Passau in Bavaria. And he already has a very firm idea of what issue he wants to tackle over the next four years in politics: poverty.

The son of a single mother, Hoss has already announced that he intends to keep only €2,500 ($2,600) of his €11,000 monthly parliamentary salary. He plans to donate the rest to people in need, social initiatives and his party. "Political parties should deal with people's concrete problems. At the moment, that's high rents, high prices and crumbling infrastructure. There is a lot to do," he told DW.

Hoss is one of only 46 parliamentarians under the age of 30 who want to shape politics in the new Bundestag, which has shrunk to 630 members as a result of electoral reform.

Luke Hoss is the youngest MP and one of only a handfull of lawmakers who are under the age of 30Image: Die Linke

Nevertheless, the proportion of young women and men has risen slightly to 7.5%. But it still lags well behind the percentage of young voters, which was at 13% this time. Hoss is certain that parliament would often make different decisions if more young people were elected there.

"It is received wisdom that you should let the 'old people' take care of things and that we, the young people, can't know much about things yet. I don't think that's good. Who better to represent the issues of young people than young people themselves?" he told DW.

Women are underrepresented

It's not just young people who are underrepresented in the Bundestag, women are too. Not even one in three members of the new parliament is female: their overall share has fallen to 32.5%.

One reason is that Bavaria's conservative Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won large numbers of seats and neither party has a women's quota. The proportion of women in the AfD is just 12%.

"The problem starts with the fact that too few women are members of political parties," says Ursula Münch, director of the Academy for Political Education in Tutzing, Bavaria. But, she says, that does not mean the Bundestag has to be a 1:1 reflection of German society in terms of the numbers: "We have an understanding of representation, but that doesn't mean that we have to mirror German society exactly. Representation means taking up concerns on behalf of other people."

Academic elite is overrepresented

The proportion of working class MPs in the new Bundestag has fallen to just 3%. In 1949, in the first German Bundestag, 18% of MPs were working class. In contrast, today one in five members of parliament is a lawyer. This is no coincidence either, says Münch.

"Quite a lot of parties' work schedules are basically geared towards academics who can organize their time much more easily. They can work from home, whereas a sales clerk or cashier can't. With meetings in mind, you shouldn't reward presence, you should constantly reward clever thinking," she told DW.

According to the political scientist, it is a major task for political parties to try to win over small business owners and workers.

Even the center-left Social Democrats, which traditionally had a working class electoral base, has seen a shift. Münch sees that as the result of the party's own successful education policy, which has seen the children of factory workers move up the ladder.

"This rise through the formation of the social-liberal coalition at the end of the 1960s and 1970s worked wonderfully. With the result that the SPD is now a party of academics, a party of teachers, civil servants, lawyers and NGO staff. But it is no longer a party of workers," explains Münch.

Underrepresentation of immigrants

While 30% of Germany's 83 million inhabitants and 14.4% of the electorate have an immigrant background, meaning they themselves or at least one of their parents did not have German citizenship at birth, the same does not go for the Bundestag:  According to Mediendienst Integration, 73 of the 630 have an non-German roots – that is only 11.6% of lawmakers.

At 20%, the Green Party has the highest proportion of MPs with an immigrant background (up from 14.4% following the previous general election). The AfD, on the other hand, is the parliamentary group with the lowest proportion of people with an immigrant background: 5.9% (down from 7.2%).

Germany's largest immigrant group has Turkish roots. They are comparatively well represented in the new Bundestag — mainly in the Left Party, but not in the AfD. The 2 million people with roots in the former Soviet Union are significantly underrepresented in parliament — and the few who are, are to be found mainly in the AfD. They are more frequently represented in the AfD and less frequently in other parties.

Didem Lacin Karabulut, chairwoman of the Federal Immigration and Integration Council (BZI), says that the representation gap in the Bundestag is widening: "Certain groups in our society systematically have fewer opportunities for political representation, which is a structural democratic deficit. A democracy can only be strong if all people are included equally, regardless of origin, gender and social status," she warned.

Political scientist Andreas Wüst from Munich's University of Applied Sciences says that people with an immigrant background and women are still at a disadvantage when it comes to power-sharing: "It is more difficult to become a member of parliament in parties to the right of center as a person with a migration background than in parties to the left of center. And across all parties, we are seeing shorter terms in parliament and lower re-election rates," Münch said.

Racism and open hostility

According to Wüst, there are more and more self-confident people with an immigrant background who have the confidence to pursue a political career and are striving to do so. At the same time, however, racism and hostility deter potential candidates.

In view of the rise of the anti-immigration AfD, Münch warns that many people with a migration background are asking themselves: "Does the political situation and the social climate still allow me to identify with this country? This may raise one or two questions. And if you don't identify, you won't participate." This, he adds, also applies to people without an immigration background, too, as he sees a general decline in the number of people who are keen to get involved in political decision-making than ever before.

This article was originally written in German. It was first published on February 28, 2025.

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