Overview

• Bundestag Vice President Omid Nouripour proposes bundling all Landtag votes on a single midterm day, holding Bundestag and municipal elections together, and extending the federal term to five years.
• He defends the idea as a way to pause perpetual campaigning and invites a cross‑party debate, pointing to a crowded 2026 state election calendar as evidence of the problem.
• CSU officials reject the plan, with General Secretary Martin Huber calling it an attack on Länder autonomy and Bavaria’s Florian Herrmann dismissing it as centralizing overreach.
• Schleswig-Holstein Landtag president Kristina Herbst deems the bundling impractical, citing federalist principles, the risk of early state elections disrupting synchronisation, and concerns that local issues would be overshadowed by federal contests.
• Changing the Bundestag term requires a Basic Law amendment with two‑thirds majorities in Bundestag and Bundesrat, and states control Landtag election timing, even as a 2023 federal commission recommended a five‑year federal term.