Bavarian State Parliament partnerships with other parliaments and organisations

The Bavarian State Parliament maintains a wide range of partnerships with other parliaments and organisations.

Partnerships with parliaments and countries

Canada – Quebec
The Bavarian State Parliament has had a close and wide-ranging partnership with the National Assembly of Québec since 1999. In 2002, the two parliaments signed an agreement on the establishment of a joint parliamentary group. The Group first met in 2004, since when there have been a total of twelve meetings, held alternately in Munich and Québec. The most recent was in Québec in November 2019.

Russia – Moscow
The Bavarian State Parliament signed a cooperation agreement with the Moscow Oblast Duma in July 2003 and a cooperation plan for the period 2005 to 2006 in 2004. A protocol on cooperation was also signed with the Moscow City Duma in May 2006. These relations have been suspended since the beginning of March 2022 against the background of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine.

China – Shandong, Guangdong
In the year 2000, a memorandum was signed with the Shandong Provincial People's Congress on deepening and developing the partnership between Shandong and Bavaria. There has been collaboration with Guangdong at a government level since 2004, and there was contact at a committee level in the 16th and 17th electoral terms. In the 17th electoral term, the State Parliament hosted a number of delegations from China.

Czech Republic
Contact with the Czech Republic intensified following the visit of Prime Minister Petr Nečas to the State Parliament in February 2013, and in September 2017, coordinators signed a joint declaration on cooperation between the Bavarian State Parliament and the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic.
26/27 January 2017 saw the first joint international commemoration of the victims of National Socialism in Prague, Litoměřice and Terezín. In May 2019, the first fact-finding trip by the Presidium in the 18th electoral term was to Prague. On that trip, the parties agreed the first trinational commemoration with Upper Austria to be held in 2020, and which became a reality in Passau on 24 January 2020.

South Africa – Western Cape
Bavaria has had a partnership with the Province of Western Cape at a government level since 1995. These institutionalised links have also led to contact at a parliamentary level. Parliamentarians from Western Cape visited the Bavarian State Parliament in 2015 and 2017, and representatives of the Western Cape government in 2016 and 2019 to find out about current political issues. The Bavarian State Parliament and the Western Cape Provincial Parliament signed a partnership in Cape Town on 2nd November 2022 .

Südtiroler Landtag [Provincial Assembly of South Tyrol] and Landtag des Trentino [Provincial Assembly of Trentino]
Bavaria has had ties to the autonomous Province of South Tyrol since 2001. A delegation from the Südtiroler Landtag visited the Bavarian State Parliament in January 2016. There have been links to the Province of Trentino since 2017. Recently, the Presidium visited Trentino in March 2018.

Ukraine
A range of projects have been launched and developed since the visit to Ukraine (Kiev and Kharkiv) by the Presidium in November 2015. These included working with charitable organisations to organise and support holiday camps for Ukrainian children from troubled regions in Eastern Ukraine. Further visits followed. In April 2020, the Presidium is to visit Kiev to find out about the current situation in the city.

Partnerships with organisations

National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL)
The NCSL is the most important umbrella organisation of the parliaments of the US states, and represents around 7500 parliamentarians and 20,000 state legislature staff. Every summer, it organises a high-level conference lasting several days that is attended by several thousand parliamentarians from the USA and hundreds of international guests. The Bavarian State Parliament has been sending representatives to the event on a regular basis for around 25 years.

Partnership of Parliaments (PdP)
The PdP brings members of the German, Austrian and Swiss state parliaments together with their colleagues from the American state legislatures and the provincial legislative assemblies of Canada. Fact-finding trips to the USA and Canada and to Germany and Austria are run under the aegis of the PdP. The PdP also organises fact-finding missions for the NCSL. The Bavarian State Parliament is a corporate member of the PdP.

CALRE
The Conference of European Regional Legislative Assemblies, CALRE for short, is an organisation that unites the 74 regional parliaments from eight European states. Members include the autonomous communities of Spain, the Italian regions, the Belgium communities and regions, the German federal states, the Austrian federal states, the Portuguese autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira, and the Finnish autonomous province of Åland. The CALRE has a plenary assembly consisting of the presidents of all the regional legislative assemblies, and a standing committee on which one assembly president from each of the eight states sits. The Bavarian State Parliament is represented by its First Vice President Karl Freller (Member of Parliament), who also sits on the CALRE Standing Committee as the representative of the German state parliaments.

Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (CLRA)
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is the institutional representative body for the more than 200,000 regional and local authorities in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe. The Congress is an advisory body of the Council of Europe and produces and submits to the Committee of Ministers reports, recommendations and resolutions on matters of local and regional policy. The CLRA also monitors compliance with the European Charter of Local Self-Government and observes elections in the member states. The Congress has 318 delegates, who are appointed by the member states of the Council of Europe. Germany has 18 ordinary members of the Congress, half of whom come from local authorities and half from federal state authorities. Bavaria is represented by the Member of Parliament Alex Dorow.

Parlamentarier-Konferenz Bodensee (IPBK)
The Parlamentarier-Konferenz Bodensee [Lake Constance Parliamentary Conference] was set up on 17 June 1994 in Bregenz. The IPBK is a parliamentary organisation that brings together the states that border Lake Constance. Its role includes fostering the exchange of ideas and information between the state and cantonal parliaments and promoting ongoing dialogue between governments, parliaments, business and civil society within the Lake Constance region. In collaboration with the Internationale Bodenseekonferenz (IBK) [Lake Constance International Conference], the IPBK launches and coordinates cross-border projects in the region around Lake Constance and, through its members, shares the findings of its discussions and consultations with the parliaments to which they belong. The Bavarian State Parliament is represented by the Members of Parliament Eric Beißwenger, Andreas Jäckel and Florian Siekmann.
 

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