Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.21-101658/https://www.ft.com/content/bf9dde37-2dc8-44df-b5f5-ef5dece888f6
On Friday, the constitutional reform secured the support of more than two-thirds of the seats in the Bundesrat, the upper house that represents Germany’s 16 federal states.
The changes, which were approved by the Bundestag earlier this week, loosen the country’s constitutional borrowing restrictions to allow unlimited defence spending and create a special €500bn, 12-year vehicle to modernise the country’s infrastructure.
I mean they’re the states, they (and the municipalities) are doing pretty much all of the day-to-day stuff. You’re paying taxes to your state of residence, not the federation, the school system is run by your state, not the federation, the vast majority of roads are municipal or state roads, all boots-on-the-ground police work is done by state police or at least according to state law (aside from the borders and the train networks), the list goes on and on.
The short version is that the Bundestag passes laws that only affect the federation on its own, when both federation and states are affected it’s Bundestag+Bundesrat, and when only states are affected neither decide, the state parliaments do, either separately for themselves or they enter treaties with each other. E.g. broadcasting law is uniform throughout Germany, but not federal law it’s an interstate treaty that all states are part of the federation has zero say in broadcasting.