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The political parties in German parliament sit in a half circle, traditionally arranged from left wing to right conservative. It is not always clear which party is left or right of which others so the specific arrangement is decided in parliament by a majority vote.

At the federal level Germany has a new government in a so called traffic light coalition composed of the social democrats SPD, the Green party and the liberal FDP. They used their majority to switch the seating order (apartently for the first time in 70 years) so they can all sit next to each other.

As far as I'm aware there never was a coalition on the federal level which did not sit next to each other in parliament. The general system works the same in each of the individual states. So question, was there ever a coalition on the state level where not all member parties sat next to each other?

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No, they don’t always sit together - for example the current situation in the Baden-Württemberg Landtag. After the 2021 elections, a Green-CDU coalition was returned. In the Sitzordnung agreed on December 15th, the arrangement from left to right is: SPD, Greens, FDP/DVP, CDU, AfD.

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No. On a federal level, the SPD+FDP coalitions did not sit together (see eg the 7th Bundestag which was run by a SPD+FDP coalition).

The main reason that the seating order was changed now is that the FDP did not want to sit next to the fascist AfD anymore.

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  • And a now deceased CSU leader said, there must not be a democratic party t the right of the CSU (paraphrased and translated, i.e. the Union covers the political spectrum as far to the right as one can decently go) ...
    – o.m.
    Commented Dec 25, 2021 at 17:36

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