Free Democratic Party (Germany)

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Freie Demokratische Partei




Leader	Guido Westerwelle

Founded	11 December 1948
Headquarters	Thomas-Dehler-Haus Reinhardtstraße 14 10117 Berlin

Political Ideology	Conservative liberalism, Economic liberalism
International Affiliation	Liberal International
European Affiliation	European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party
European Parliament Group	Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Colours	blue/yellow

Website	www.fdp.de

See also	Politics of Germany Political parties Elections

The Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) is a liberal political party in Germany. The party's political contents uphold the values of freedom and individual responsibility under a government "as extensive as necessary, and as limited as possible" (German: so viel Staat wie nötig, so wenig Staat wie möglich). Among the parties represented in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, the FDP follows more economically liberal ideas. It promotes a market economy that retains reformed features of the German social welfare system, and aims at increasing incentives for private investments through "cutting red tape", privatizations, deregulation, subsidy reform, tax cuts, and a reform of collective bargaining laws. In foreign policy the FDP supports European integration and transatlantic partnership between the European Union and the United States. The FDP is currently the third largest party in the Bundestag.

The party has generally distinguished itself from the more dominant Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) by taking a stronger pro-business orientation. Alliance 90/The Greens, Germany's green party, and The Left, a democratic socialist party espouse more economic interventionism.

The FDP-supporting electorate has traditionally been composed mainly of middle-class and upper-class people who consider themselves to be independents and proponents of European liberalism. The party has usually been the third or fourth largest party in Germany, historically having gained between 5.8% and 12.8% of the votes in federal elections. The FDP has held the balance of power for most of the federal republic's existence. It was the junior partner in coalition governments with the Christian Democrats from 1949 to 1956, from 1961 to 1966 and from 1982 to 1998, and with the Social Democrats from 1969 to 1982.

[edit] History

The FDP was founded on 11 December 1948 through the merger of regional liberal parties formed in 1945 from the remnants of the German People's Party (DVP) and the German Democratic Party (DDP), which had been active in the Weimar Republic. The FDP's first Chairman, Theodor Heuss, was a former member of the DDP.

Throughout its history, the party's policies have shifted between emphases on social liberalism and economic liberalism. Since the 1980s, the FDP has maintained a consistent pro-business stance. However, its orientation to a free market is qualified by the principle that certain desirable objectives cannot be achieved solely through market mechanisms. Therefore, the FDP supports a minimum standard of welfare protection for every citizen and strong competition laws.

In all federal election campaigns since the 1980s, the party sided with the CDU and CSU, the main conservative parties in Germany. An exception to the party policy was made in the the 2002 campaign, in which it adopted a position of "equidistance" to the CDU and SPD. Following German reunification in 1990, the FDP merged with the Association of Free Democrats, a grouping of liberals from East Germany. During the 1990s, the FDP won between 6.2 and 11 percent of the vote in Bundestag elections. Between 1982 and 1998, it served as the junior partner in the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the CDU.

[edit] 2005 federal election

In the 2005 general election the party won 9.8 percent of the vote and 61 federal deputies, an unpredicted improvement from prior opinion polls. It is believed that this was partly due to tactical voting by CDU/CSU faction supporters who hoped for stronger market-oriented economic reforms than the CDU/CSU faction called for. However, because the CDU did worst than predicted, the FDP and the CDU/CSU faction were unable to form a coalition government. At other times, for example after the 2002 federal election, a coalition between the FDP and CDU/CSU was impossible primarily because of the weak results of the FDP.

The CDU/CSU parties had achieved the 3rd worst performance in the federal republics existence with only 35.2 percent of the votes. Therefore, the FDP wasn't able to form a coalition with its preferred partners, the CDU/CSU parties. As a result, the party was considered as a potential member of various possible political coalitions, following the election. One possibility was a partnership between the FDP, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, known as a "traffic light coalition", because the colors of the three parties are those displayed on traffic lights. This coalition wasn't sealed, because the FDP considered the Social Democrats and the Greens insufficiently committed to market-oriented economic reform, which automatically ruled out such a coalition. The other possibility was a CDU-FDP-Green coalition, known as a "Jamaica coalition" because the colours of the respective parties are those of the Jamaican flag. This coalition wasn't concluded neither, since the Greens ruled out participation in any coalition with the CDU/CSU. Instead, the CDU formed a grand coalition with the SPD, and the FDP entered the opposition. FDP leader Guido Westerwelle became the unofficial leader of the opposition by virtue of the FDP's position as the largest opposition party in the Bundestag.