Number of seats in Germany's Bundestag to shrink from 736 to 630

The lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, is to shrink in size after the next elections from the current 736 to 630 members.
The parliamentary groups of the three parties in the German coalition government - the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) - have agreed on the plan, dpa learned from sources within the coalition on Sunday, confirming earlier reports on the news site Pioneer.
The coalition introduced its first draft for reform of the Bundestag at the end of January, which foresaw just 598 seats in the chamber.
The number has now been increased in order to reduce the number of "orphan constituencies" from which no directly elected lawmaker is sent to parliament. The amendment was made available to dpa.
Under the German system, voters directly elect a lawmaker for their constituency and also vote for party lists in the state they are resident in. The final make-up of the parliament is a mix of direct mandates and seats allocated to each party according to the proportion of the vote they receive nationally.
The reform is expected to be passed in the Bundestag on Thursday or Friday.
The number of constituencies will remain at 299, but 331 mandates will be allocated via the state lists, instead of 299 as originally planned. The aim is to keep the number of MPs who win a constituency via the first vote and still do not get into the Bundestag as small as possible.