Germany should merge some federal states, says Söder

Bavarian state premier Markus Söder (CSU) has said that Germany should merge some of its 16 federal states in order to make the federal system more efficient.

Söder wants to merge German states

Speaking at the CSU’s winter meeting in Kloster Banz, Söder gave his two cents and reignited a debate around whether some of Germany’s 16 federal states should be merged.

Söder said that ideally there would be fewer and larger states, and that the current federal system, in which some larger, wealthier states financially support smaller states, cannot continue. “Larger entities are more successful than smaller ones,” Söder said. “[F]ewer states, it's simple,” he added, but admitted that the process “wasn’t something that would happen overnight”.

Certainly not. Merging German federal states requires the concerned states to hold a referendum on the matter and for the majority of residents to vote in favour of a merger. Today, Berlin and Brandenburg remain separate states due to a failed merger referendum in 1996.

What does Söder have in mind?

The state premier gave few concrete details about which mergers he had in mind. In 2024, he previously suggested that the city state of Bremen and Saarland, another of Germany’s small federal states, could be “economised”, according to a report by FOCUS.

Reacting to Söder’s most recent comments, Saarland state premier Anke Rehlinger (SPD) said that “Saarland pride is Söder-resistant”.

More broadly, Söder called for an end to the Berlin-Bonn Act, which was introduced during the German reunification period to move the seat of the federal government from Bonn to Berlin. As part of the act, some government bodies are still located in Bonn.

The minister said continuing to enforce the act costs “immense amounts of money” and that he would “have no problem with federal ministries being located in the east”.