Free Democratic Party

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The Free Democratic Party (German: Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP, German pronunciation: [ɛfdeːˈpeː] ) is a liberal political party in Germany. The FDP was founded in 1948 by members of former liberal political parties in Germany before World War II, namely the German Democratic Party and the German People's Party. For most of the second half of the 20th century, when West Germany was a two-party country, the FDP as third party determined the balance of power in the Bundestag. It has been a junior coalition partner to both the Christian Democratic Union (1949–1956, 1961–1966, 1982–1998, and 2009–2013) and the Social Democratic Party (1969–1982 and 2021–2024). After an all-time high result in 2009 and four years in government under CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel, with a flip-flop stance towards nuclear power, in the 2013 federal election the FDP came up short of the 5 percent threshold, being left without representation in the Bundestag for the first time in its history. In the 2017 federal...

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