Die Bestimmung des Stellvertreters des Ministerpräsidenten als Teil der Regierungsbildung -- Allgemeine Grundsätze und verfassungsrechtliche Besonderheiten in Rheinland-Pfalz. (German)

The most important constitutional executive organ of a German federal state is its prime minister. It is their obligation to appoint a minister as their deputy to ensure that all of their tasks and duties are continuously fulfilled even if they themselves are not available. The appointed minister though does not hold another office but only a second function. While the constitutions in Rhineland-Palatinate (article 105 paragraph 2 p. 3 LV-RP) and in Bavaria (article 46 LV-BY) rule that every appointment of a prime minister's deputy needs the state parliament's affirmation this is not the case for his or her dismissal. In this detail it differs from the appointment and dismissal of the state's ministers (articles 98 paragraph 2 p. 4 LV-RP; 45 LV-BY). The possessive pronouns, used by the states' constitutions as well as by the German Basic Law, to describe the deputy's appointment obviously conjoint him or her to the prime minister. The resignation of the latter therefore unquestionably leads to the end of the former's function of being the prime minister's deputy but not to him or her being minister, since there is no Rhineland-Palatinate passage equivalent to article 69 paragraph 2 of the German Constitution. This particularity has already led to inaccuracies in two changes of government in the past, resulting in the fact that today's prime minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, has no legal deputy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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