Abstract
This article represents the German part of the European COST A 14 study. As the results clearly differ in some respect from the European mainstream, a short introduction is given into the special situation of the national parliament. We found that there were problems integrating the German experience into the European framework: the results sometimes fit the general tendencies; in other respects they offer a quite unique picture. Questions of compatibility arise that go back to the general methodology of the study (see the introductory chapter in this issue). To utilize the data from Germany, it is probably best to take them as an example of a large Western European parliament that is only partially compatible to the smaller parliaments that stand in the centre of the approach used in the COST A 14 studies.