Top German court faults part of a plan to solve the country’s problem of too many lawmakers

Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s highest court has upheld the central part of an electoral reform designed to downsize the country’s increasingly bloated parliament. But in a ruling Tuesday, it overturned a planned change that two opposition parties feared could cost them their chance to send lawmakers to Berlin. The country’s last national election in 2021 produced a lower house of parliament, or Bundestag, with a record 736 members. That’s bigger than the newly elected European Parliament. Parties across the political spectrum agree that the Bundestag has too many members, but they have disagreed for years on what to do about it. Lawmakers last year approved a plan by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition to cap the chamber’s size at 630 members.