Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is located in western Germany covering an area of and a population of 4.05 million inhabitants, the seventh-most populous German state. Mainz is the state capital and largest city, while other major cities include Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Koblenz, Trier, Kaiserslautern, and Worms. Rhineland-Palatinate is surrounded by the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg, and Hesse. It also borders three foreign countries: France, Luxembourg and Belgium.
Politics of Rhineland-Palatinate
The politics of Rhineland-Palatinate takes place within a framework of a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic, where the Federal Government of Germany exercises sovereign rights with certain powers reserved to the states of Germany including Rhineland-Palatinate. The state has a multi-party system where the two main parties are the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).