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The capital of Germany is Berlin, its area measures 357,026 square kilometres, the population is made up of 55,536,680 inhabitants, the gross domestic product is 2,136.5 billion Euros. The inflation is 1.7%, its unemployment rate is 9.2%, the deficit is –3.9% and its National debt is 65.9%. The German Federal Republic is defined by the article n. 20, first subsection of the basic Law of Bonn, the so-called Grundgesetz, a Federal, democratic, social State. The law-making and Government functions are divided between the Bund, i.e. the Federal State, and 16 Länder, the regions that make up the German territory. The Federal organ is the Parliament, including the Federal Chamber (Bundestag) and the Federal Council (Bundesrat), an organ representing the Länder within the Federation. They also have a Federal President and a Federal Government. The function of controlling all these institutions respect the law, is exerted by the federal constitutional tribunal. The German form of Government is a parliamentary one, so they need a confidence relationship between the Bundestag and the Federal Chancellor. The Federal Chancellor has a much more important function than the other Ministers. The Bundestag is elected by universal suffrage every 4 years. The electoral system is a majority one for one half and proportional with a blocking clause fixed at 5% for the other half. That is just the Parties that achieve more than the 5% of the votes can enter the Bundestag. Whereas the Bundesrat is made up of 69 representatives of the Länder’s Governments, in a number related to the population of each Land. The political elections recently took place in Germany, on 18th September 2005, and they awarded the relative majority to the Christian-Democratic Union, CDU. This is a party linked with the Christian-Social Union, CSU, a Catholic party present just in Bevier. These two parties achieved the 40.8% of the votes. The Social-Democratic Party, SPD, gained the 38.6%. No one of the coalitions leaded by the two main parties achieved the majority of seats within the Parliament. Therefore, after long negotiations they created a Government of “Great Coalition”, supported both from the Christian-Democratics and the Christian-Socials and from the Social-Democratics. The leader of the Christian-Democratics Angela Merkel has been elected Chancellor by the Bundestag on 22 November 2005, due to the Government Pact. The Liberal-Democratic party on one hand and the former communist PDS with the Greens on the other hand, remained at the opposition. Germany is one of the founding countries of the European Communities, and it is one of the protagonist of the communitarian integration process. It has a good 99 seats within the European Parliament, and it is the country with the highest number of seats. The European elections were held on 13th June 2004 by a proportional system with the blocking clause fixed at 5%. Due to these elections the German delegation within the Parliament is made up of 40 deputies from CDU, 9 from CSU and they both joined the European Popular Party. 23 seats were awarded to the Social-Democratics, and they joined the Socialist group, 13 to the Greens, 7 to the PDS and they joined the radical Left and the same to the Liberals that joined the Democratic and Liberal Alliance. The German commissary within Barroso’s Commission is Gunter Verheugen, responsible for enterprise and industry and Vice-President of the Commission.
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