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Free Democratic Party (Germany)

The Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP, ) is a liberal political party in Germany.

The FDP was founded in 1948 by members of former liberal political parties which existed 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, particularly from 1961 to 1982, the FDP held the balance of power in the Bundestag. It has been a junior coalition partner to both the CDU/CSU (1949–1956, 1961–1966, 1982–1998 and 2009–2013) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) (1969–1982, 2021–present). In the 2013 federal election, the FDP failed to win any directly elected seats in the Bundestag and came up short of the 5 percent threshold to qualify for list representation, being left without representation in the Bundestag for the first time in its history. In the 2017 federal election, the FDP regained its representation in the Bundestag, receiving 10.6% of the vote. After the 2021 federal election the FDP became part of governing Scholz cabinet in coalition with the Social Democratic Party and the Greens.

Since the 1980s, the party, consistently with its ordoliberal tradition, has pushed economic liberalism and has aligned itself closely to the promotion of free markets and privatization, and is aligned to the centre or centre-right  of the political spectrum. The FDP is a member of the Liberal International, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and Renew Europe.

Predecessors
The history of liberal parties in Germany dates back to 1861, when the German Progress Party (DFP) was founded, being the first political party in the modern sense in Germany. From the establishment of the National Liberal Party in 1867 until the demise of the Weimar Republic in 1933, the liberal-democratic camp was divided into a "national-liberal" and a "left-liberal" line of tradition. After 1918 the national-liberal strain was represented by the German People's Party (DVP), the left-liberal one by the German Democratic Party (DDP, which merged into the German State Party in 1930). Both parties played an important role in government during the Weimar Republic era, but successively lost votes during the rise of the Nazi Party beginning in the late-1920s. After the Nazi seizure of power, both liberal parties agreed to the Enabling Act of 1933 and subsequently dissolved themselves. During the 12 years of Hitler's rule, some former liberals collaborated with the Nazis (e.g. economy minister Hjalmar Schacht), while others resisted actively against Nazism, with some Liberal leaning members and former members of the military joining up with Henning von Tresckow (e.g. the Solf Circle).

Soon after World War II, the Soviet Union pushed for the creation of licensed "anti-fascist" parties in its occupation zone in East Germany. In July 1945, former DDP politicians Wilhelm Külz, Eugen Schiffer and Waldemar Koch called for the establishment of a pan-German liberal party. Their Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) was soon licensed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, under the condition that the new party joined the pro-Soviet "Democratic Bloc".

In September 1945, citizens in Hamburg—including the anti-Nazi resistance circle "Association Free Hamburg"—established the Party of Free Democrats (PFD) as a bourgeois left-wing party and the first liberal Party in the Western occupation zones. The German Democratic Party was revived in some states of the Western occupation zones (in the Southwestern states of Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern under the name of Democratic People's Party).

Many former members of DDP and DVP however agreed to finally overcome the traditional split of German liberalism into a national-liberal and a left-liberal branch, aiming for the creation of a united liberal party. In October 1945 a liberal coalition party was founded in the state of Bremen under the name of Bremen Democratic People's Party. In January 1946, liberal state parties of the British occupation zone merged into the Free Democratic Party of the British Zone (FDP). A similar state party in Hesse, called the Liberal Democratic Party, was licensed by the U.S. military government in January 1946. In the state of Bavaria, a Free Democratic Party was founded in May 1946.

In the first post-war state elections in 1946, liberal parties performed well in Württemberg-Baden (16.8%), Bremen (18.3%), Hamburg (18.2%) and Greater Berlin (still undivided; 9.3%). The LDP was especially strong in the October 1946 state elections of the Soviet zone—the last free parliamentary election in East Germany—obtaining an average of 24.6% (highest in Saxony-Anhalt, 29.9%, and Thuringia, 28.5%), thwarting an absolute majority of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) that was favoured by the Soviet occupation power. This disappointment to the communists however led to a change of electoral laws in the Soviet zone, cutting the autonomy of non-socialist parties including the LDP and forcing it to join the SED-dominated National Front, making it a dependent "bloc party".

The Democratic Party of Germany (DPD) was established in Rothenburg ob der Tauber on 17 March 1947 as a pan-German party of liberals from all four occupation zones. Its leaders were Theodor Heuss (representing the DVP of Württemberg-Baden in the American zone) and Wilhelm Külz (representing the LDP of the Soviet zone). However, the project failed in January 1948 as a result of disputes over Külz's pro-Soviet direction.

Founding of the party
The Free Democratic Party was established on 11–12 December 1948 in Heppenheim, in Hesse, as an association of all 13 liberal state parties in the three Western zones of occupation. The proposed name, Liberal Democratic Party, was rejected by the delegates, who voted 64 to 25 in favour of the name Free Democratic Party (FDP).

The party's first chairman was Theodor Heuss, a member of the Democratic People's Party in Württemberg-Baden; his deputy was Franz Blücher of the FDP in the British zone. The place for the party's foundation was chosen deliberately: the "Heppenheim Assembly" was held at the Hotel Halber Mond on 10 October 1847, a meeting of moderate liberals who were preparing for what would be, within a few months, the German revolutions of 1848–1849.

The FDP was founded on 11 December 1948 through the merger of nine regional liberal parties formed in 1945 from the remnants of the pre-1933 German People's Party (DVP) and the German Democratic Party (DDP), which had been active in the Weimar Republic.

1949–1969: reconstruction of Germany

In the first elections to the Bundestag on 14 August 1949, the FDP won a vote share of 11.9 percent (with 12 direct mandates, particularly in Baden-Württemberg and Hesse), and thus obtained 52 of 402 seats. It formed a common Bundestag group with the hard-right Deutsche Partei (DP). In September of the same year the FDP chairman Theodor Heuss was elected the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany. In his 1954 re-election, he received the best election result to date of a President with 871 of 1018 votes (85.6 percent) of the Federal Assembly. Adenauer was also elected on the proposal of the new German President with an extremely narrow majority as the first Chancellor. The FDP participated with the CDU/CSU and the German Party in Adenauer's coalition cabinet; they had three ministers: Franz Blücher (Vice-Chancellor), Thomas Dehler (justice), and Eberhard Wildermuth (housing).

On the most important economic, social and German national issues, the FDP agreed with their coalition partners, the CDU/CSU. However, the FDP offered to middle-class voters a secular party that refused the religious schools and accused the opposition parties of clericalization. The FDP said they were known also as a consistent representative of the market economy, while the CDU was then dominated nominally from the Ahlen Programme, which allowed a Third Way between capitalism and socialism. Ludwig Erhard, the "father" of the social market economy, had his followers in the early years of the Federal Republic in the CDU/CSU rather than in the FDP.

The FDP won Hesse's 1950 state election with 31.8 percent, the best result in its history, through appealing to East Germans displaced by the war by including them on their ticket.

Up to the 1950s, several of the FDP's regional organizations were to the right of the CDU/CSU, which initially had ideas of some sort of Christian socialism, and even former office-holders of the Third Reich were courted with nationalist values. The FDP voted in parliament at the end of 1950 against the CDU- and SPD-introduced de-nazification process. At their party conference in Munich in 1951 they demanded the release of all "so-called war criminals" and welcomed the establishment of the "Association of German soldiers" of former Wehrmacht and SS members to advance the integration of the Nazi forces in democracy. The FDP members were seen as part of the "extremist" block along with the German Party in West Germany by the US intelligence officials.

Similarly, a de-Nazification Act could only be passed at the end of 1950 in the Bundestag because the opposition SPD supported the motion along with the governing CDU/CSU; the governing FDP voted along with the hard-right DP and the openly neo-Nazi German Reich Party (DRP) against the law against Nazis.

The 1953 Naumann Circle, named after Werner Naumann, consisted of a group of former Nazis who tried to infiltrate the party, which had many right-wing and nationalist members in Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. After the British occupation authorities had arrested seven prominent members of the Naumann Circle, the FDP federal board installed a commission of inquiry, chaired by Thomas Dehler, which particularly sharply criticized the situation in the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP. In the following years, the right wing lost power, and the extreme right increasingly sought areas of activity outside the FDP. In the 1953 federal election, the FDP received 9.5 percent of the party votes, 10.8 percent of the primary vote (with 14 direct mandates, particularly in Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Württemberg and Bavaria) and 48 of 487 seats.

In the second term of the Bundestag, the South German Liberal Democrats gained influence in the party. Thomas Dehler, a representative of a more social-liberal course took over as party and parliamentary leader. The former Minister of Justice Dehler, who in 1933 suffered persecution by the Nazis, was known for his rhetorical focus. Generally the various regional associations were independent. After the FDP had left in early 1956, the coalition with the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia and made with SPD and centre a new state government, were a total of 16 members of parliament, including the four federal ministers from the FDP and founded the short-lived Free People's Party, which then up was involved to the end of the legislature instead of FDP in the Federal Government. The FDP first took it to the opposition.

Only one of the smaller post-war parties, the FDP survived despite many problems. In 1957 federal elections they still reached 7.7 percent of the vote to 1990 and their last direct mandate with which they had held 41 of 497 seats in the Bundestag. However, they still remained in opposition because the Union won an absolute majority. The FDP also called for a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe.

Even before the election Dehler was assigned as party chairman. At the federal party in Berlin at the end January 1957 relieved him Reinhold Maier. Dehler's role as Group Chairman took over after the election of the national set very Erich Mende. Mende was also chairman of the party.

In the 1961 federal election, the FDP achieved 12.8 percent nationwide, the best result until then, and the FDP entered a coalition with the CDU again. Although it was committed before the election to continuing to sit in any case in a government together with Adenauer, Chancellor Adenauer was again, however, to withdraw under the proviso, after two years. These events led to the FDP being nicknamed the Umfallerpartei ("pushover party").

In the Spiegel affair, the FDP withdrew their ministers from the federal government. Although the coalition was renewed again under Adenauer in 1962, the FDP withdrew again on the condition in October 1963. This occurred even under the new Chancellor, Ludwig Erhard. This was for Erich Mende turn the occasion to go into the cabinet: he took the rather unimportant Federal Ministry for All-German Affairs.

In the 1965 federal elections the FDP gained 9.5 percent. The coalition with the CDU in 1966 broke on the subject of tax increases and it was followed by a grand coalition between the CDU and the SPD. The opposition also pioneered a course change: the former foreign policy and the attitude to the eastern territories were discussed. The opposition leader for the FDP in the Bundestag was Knut von Kühlmann-Stumm. The new chairman elected delegates in 1968 Walter Scheel, a European-oriented liberals, although it came from the national liberal camp, but with Willi Weyer and Hans-Dietrich Genscher led the new centre of the party. This center strove to make the FDP coalition support both major parties. Here, the Liberals approached to by their reorientation in East Germany and politics especially of the SPD.

1969–1982: social changes and crises
On 21 October 1969 began the period after the election of a Social-Liberal coalition with the SPD and the German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Walter Scheel was he who initiated the foreign policy reversal. Despite a very small majority he and Willy Brandt sat by the controversial New Ostpolitik. This policy was within the FDP quite controversial, especially since after the entry into the Federal Government defeats in state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Saarland on 14 June 1970 followed. In Hanover and Saarbrücken, the party left the parliament.

After the federal party congress in Bonn, just a week later supported the policy of the party leadership and Scheel had confirmed in office, founded by Siegfried party rights Zoglmann 11 July 1970 a "non-partisan" organization called the National-Liberal action on the Hohensyburgstraße—to fall with the goal of ending the social-liberal course of the party and Scheel. However, this was not. Zoglmann supported in October 1970 a disapproval resolution of opposition to Treasury Secretary Alexander Möller, Erich Mende, Heinz Starke, and did the same. A little later all three declared their withdrawal from the FDP; Mende and Strong joined the CDU, Zoglmann later founded the German Union (Deutsche Union), which remained a splinter party.

The foreign policy and the socio-political changes were made in 1971 by the Freiburg Thesis, which were as Rowohlt Paperback sold more than 100,000 times, on a theoretical basis, the FDP is committed to "social liberalism" and social reforms. Walter Scheel was first foreign minister and vice chancellor, 1974, he was then second-liberal President and paving the way for inner-party the previous interior minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher free.

From 1969 to 1974 the FDP supported the SPD Chancellor Willy Brandt, who was succeeded by Helmut Schmidt. Already by the end of the 70s there did not seem to be enough similarities between the FDP and the SPD to form a new coalition, but the CDU/CSU chancellor candidate of Franz Josef Strauss in 1980 pushed the parties to run together again. The FDP's policies, however, began to drift apart from the SPD's, especially when it came to the economy. Within the SPD, there was strong grassroots opposition to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's policies on the NATO Double-Track Decision. However, within the FDP, the conflicts and contrasts were always greater.

1982–1998: Kohl government, economic transition and reunification
In the fall of 1982, the FDP reneged on its coalition agreement with the SPD and instead threw its support behind the CDU/CSU. On 1 October, the FDP and CDU/CSU were able to oust Schmidt and replace him with CDU party chairman Helmut Kohl as the new Chancellor. The coalition change resulted in severe internal conflicts, and the FDP then lost about 20 percent of its 86,500 members, as reflected in the general election in 1983 by a drop from 10.6 percent to 7.0 percent. The members went mostly to the SPD, the Greens and newly formed splinter parties, such as the left-liberal party Liberal Democrats (LD). The exiting members included the former FDP General Secretary and later EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen. At the party convention in November 1982, the Schleswig-Holstein state chairman Uwe Ronneburger challenged Hans-Dietrich Genscher as party chairman. Ronneburger received 186 of the votes—about 40 percent—and was just narrowly defeated by Genscher.

in 1980, FDP members who did not agree with the politics of the FDP youth organization Young Democrats founded the Young Liberals (JuLis). For a time JuLis and the Young Democrats operated side by side, until the JuLis became the sole official youth wing of the FDP in 1983. The Young Democrats split from the FDP and were left as a party-independent youth organization.

At the time of reunification, the FDP's objective was a special economic zone in the former East Germany, but could not prevail against the CDU/CSU, as this would prevent any loss of votes in the five new federal states in the general election in 1990.

In all federal election campaigns since the 1980s, the party sided with the CDU and CSU, the main conservative parties in Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, the FDP merged with the Association of Free Democrats, a grouping of liberals from East Germany and the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany.

During the political upheavals of 1989/1990 in the GDR new liberal parties emerged, like the FDP East Germany or the German Forum Party. They formed the Liberal Democratic Party, who had previously acted as a bloc party on the side of the SED and with Manfred Gerlach also the last Council of State of the GDR presented, the Alliance of Free Democrats (BFD). Within the FDP came in the following years to considerable internal discussions about dealing with the former bloc party. Even before the reunification of Germany united on a joint congress in Hanover, the West German FDP united with the other parties to form the first all-German party. Both party factions brought the FDP a great, albeit short-lived, increase in membership. In the first all-German Bundestag elections, the CDU/CSU/FDP centre-right coalition was confirmed, the FDP received 11.0 percent of the valid votes (79 seats) and won in Genschers city of birth Halle (Saale) the first direct mandate since 1957.

During the 1990s, the FDP won between 6.2 and 11 percent of the vote in Bundestag elections. It last participated in the federal government by representing the junior partner in the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the CDU.

In 1998, the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition lost the federal election, which ended the FDP's nearly three decade reign in government. In its 2002 campaign the FDP made an exception to its party policy of siding with the CDU/CSU when it adopted equidistance to the CDU and SPD. From 1998 until 2009 the FDP remained in the opposition until it became part of a new centre-right coalition government.

2005 federal election
In the 2005 general election the party won 9.8 percent of the vote and 61 federal deputies, an unpredicted improvement from prior opinion polls. It is believed that this was partly due to tactical voting by CDU and Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) alliance supporters who hoped for stronger market-oriented economic reforms than the CDU/CSU alliance called for. However, because the CDU did worse than predicted, the FDP and the CDU/CSU alliance were unable to form a coalition government. At other times, for example after the 2002 federal election, a coalition between the FDP and CDU/CSU was impossible primarily because of the weak results of the FDP.

The CDU/CSU parties had achieved the third-worst performance in German postwar history with only 35.2 percent of the votes. Therefore, the FDP was unable to form a coalition with its preferred partners, the CDU/CSU parties. As a result, the party was considered as a potential member of two other political coalitions, following the election. One possibility was a partnership between the FDP, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Alliance 90/The Greens, known as a "traffic light coalition", named after the colors of the three parties. This coalition was ruled out, because the FDP considered the Social Democrats and the Greens insufficiently committed to market-oriented economic reform. The other possibility was a CDU-FDP-Green coalition, known as a "Jamaica coalition" because of the colours of the three parties. This coalition wasn't concluded either, since the Greens ruled out participation in any coalition with the CDU/CSU. Instead, the CDU formed a Grand coalition with the SPD, and the FDP entered the opposition. FDP leader Guido Westerwelle became the unofficial leader of the opposition by virtue of the FDP's position as the largest opposition party in the Bundestag.

In the 2009 European election, the FDP received 11% of the national vote (2,888,084 votes in total) and returned 12 MEPs.

2009–2013: Merkel II government
In the September 2009 federal elections, the FDP increased its share of the vote by 4.8 percentage points to 14.6%, an all-time record. This percentage was enough to offset a decline in the CDU/CSU's vote compared to 2005, to create a CDU-FDP centre-right governing coalition in the Bundestag with a 53% majority of seats. On election night, party leader Westerwelle said his party would work to ensure that civil liberties were respected and that Germany got an "equitable tax system and better education opportunities".

The party also made gains in the two state elections held at the same time, acquiring sufficient seats for a CDU-FDP coalition in the northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, and gaining enough votes in left-leaning Brandenburg to clear the 5% hurdle to enter that state's parliament.

However, after reaching its best ever election result in 2009, the FDP's support collapsed. The party's policy pledges were put on hold by Merkel as the recession of 2009 unfolded and with the onset of the European debt crisis in 2010. By the end of 2010, the party's support had dropped to as low as 5%. The FDP retained their seats in the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, which was held six months after the federal election, but out of the seven state elections that have been held since 2009, the FDP have lost all their seats in five of them due to failing to cross the 5% threshold.

Support for the party further eroded amid infighting and an internal rebellion over euro-area bailouts during the debt crisis.

Westerwelle stepped down as party leader following the 2011 state elections, in which the party was wiped out in Saxony-Anhalt and Rhineland-Palatinate and lost half its seats in Baden-Württemberg. Westerwelle was replaced in May 2011 by Philipp Rösler. The change in leadership failed to revive the FDP's fortunes, however, and in the next series of state elections, the party lost all its seats in Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Berlin. In Berlin, the party lost nearly 75% of the support they had had in the previous election.

In March 2012, the FDP lost all their state-level representation in the 2012 Saarland state election. However, this was offset by the Schleswig-Holstein state elections, when they achieved 8% of the vote, which was a severe loss of seats but still over the 5% threshold. In the snap elections in North Rhine-Westphalia a week later, the FDP not only crossed the electoral threshold, but also increased its share of the votes to 2 percentage points higher than in the previous state election. This was attributed to the local leadership of Christian Lindner.

2013 federal election
The FDP last won a directly elected seat in 1990, in Halle—the only time it has won a directly elected seat since 1957. The party's inability to win directly elected seats came back to haunt it at the 2013 election, in which it came up just short of the 5% threshold. With no directly elected seats, the FDP was shut out of the Bundestag for the first time since 1949. After the previous chairman Philipp Rösler then resigned, Christian Lindner took over the leadership of the party.

2014 European and state elections
In the 2014 European parliament elections, the FDP received 3.4% of the national vote (986,253 votes in total) and returned 3 MEPs. In the 2014 Brandenburg state election the party experienced a 5.8% down-swing and lost all their representatives in the Brandenburg state parliament. In the 2014 Saxony state election, the party experienced a 5.2% down-swing, again losing all of its seats. In the 2014 Thuringian state election a similar phenomenon was repeated with the party falling below the 5% threshold following a 5.1% drop in popular vote.

2015–2020
The party managed to enter parliament in the 2015 Bremen state election with the party receiving 6.5% of the vote and gaining 6 seats. However, it failed to get into government as a coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens was created. In the 2016 Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election the party failed to get into parliament despite increasing its vote share by 0.3%. The party did manage to get into parliament in Baden-Württemberg, gaining 3% of the vote and a total of 12 seats. This represents a five-seat improvement over their previous results. In the 2016 Berlin state election the party gained 4.9% of the vote and 12 seats but still failed to get into government. A red-red-green coalition was instead formed relegating the FDP to the opposition. In the 2016 Rhineland-Palatinate state election, the party managed to enter parliament receiving 6.2% of the vote and 7 seats. It also managed to enter government under a traffic light coalition. In 2016 Saxony-Anhalt state election the party narrowly missed the 5% threshold, receiving 4.9% of the vote and therefore receiving zero seats despite a 1% swing in their favour.

The 2017 North Rhine-Westphalia state election was widely considered a test of the party's future as their chairman Christian Lindner was also leading the party in that state. The party experienced a 4% swing in its favour gaining 6 seats and entering into a coalition with the CDU with a bare majority. In the 2017 Saarland state election the party again failed to gain any seats despite a 1% swing in their favour. The party gained 3 seats and increased its vote share by 3.2% in the 2017 Schleswig-Holstein state election. This success was often credited to their state chairman Wolfgang Kubicki. They also managed to re-enter the government under a Jamaica coalition.

In the 2017 federal election the party scored 10.7% of votes and re-entered the Bundestag, winning 80 seats. After the election, a Jamaica coalition was considered between the CDU, Greens, and FDP. However, FDP chief Christian Lindner walked out of the coalition talks due to a disagreement over European migration policy, saying "It is better not to govern than to govern badly." As a result, the CDU/CSU formed another grand coalition with the SPD.

The FDP won 5.4% and 5 seats in the 2019 European election.

In the October 2019 Thuringian state election, the FDP won seats in the Landtag of Thuringia for the first time since 2009. It exceeded the 5% threshold by just 5 votes. In February 2020, the FDP's Thomas Kemmerich was elected Minister-President of Thuringia by the Landtag with the likely support of the CDU and AfD, becoming the second member of the FDP to serve as head of government in a German state. This was also the first time a head of government had been elected with the support of AfD. Under intense pressure from state and federal politicians, Kemmerich resigned the following day, stating he would seek new elections. The next month, he was replaced by Bodo Ramelow of The Left; the FDP did not run a candidate in the second vote for Minister-President.

2021–present
In 2021, the FDP returned to the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament after five years of absence. They had similar success in Baden-Württemberg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but faced setbacks in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin and Rhineland-Palatinate.

In the September 2021 federal election, the FDP saw its vote share and number of seats grow, to 11.5% and 92 seats respectively. As a result of the defeat of the CDU/CSU under Armin Laschet, the SPD, Greens, and FDP entered talks to form a traffic light coalition. The agreement was finalised on 24 November, in which the FDP holds four federal ministries in the Scholz cabinet (Finance, Justice, Digital and Transport and Education and Research).

Throughout 2022, the FDP saw poor approval in national opinion polls. In State Parliament elections they also performed poorly. In March, the FDP didn't win any seats in Saarland. In May they lost over half their seats in North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. In October, the FDP lost all 11 of their seats in Lower Saxony. It also lost all 12 seats in the 2023 Berlin repeat state election.

In the 2023 Bavarian state election, where Martin Hagen is leading the party, all 11 seats were lost.

Ideology and platform

The FDP's political position has variously been described as centrist, centre-right, and right-wing. The FDP has been described as liberal,  conservative-liberal,  classical-liberal,  and liberal-conservative. Other sources have described the party as libertarian or right-libertarian.

The FDP is a predominantly classical-liberal inspired party, both in the sense of supporting free market economic policies and in the sense of policies emphasizing the minimization of government interference in individual affairs. During election campaigning, the party has emphasised support for tax cuts, reductions in government spending and balanced budgets. The party has also been described by various media sources as neoliberal. Scholars of political science have historically identified the FDP as closer to the CDU/CSU bloc than to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) on economic issues but closer to the SPD and the Greens on issues such as civil liberties, education, defense, and foreign policy. The FDP itself has oriented itself towards a centrist position between the CDU and the SPD, however it is to the right of the CDU in its socioeconomics perspective, environmental and labour policies.

The party is a traditional supporter of ordoliberalism, having been influenced by the economic theories of Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rüstow. Otto Graf Lambsdorff, who served as Federal Minister of Economics, is a historical FDP grandee who was a proponent of ordoliberalism. In 1971 during its federal social-liberal coalition with the SPD, the FDP published the Freiburger Thesis programme, heralding an ideological move towards reformism and social liberalism, and support for environmental protection. However, the party's 1977 Kiel Theses and 1985 Liberal Manifesto returned the FDP towards its traditional free-market, ordoliberal approach. Historical members of the party's social-liberal wing included Gerhart Baum and Werner Maihofer, a faction who remained organised as the Freiberg Circle. Alternatively to the liberal-orientated wings of the party are a conservative or national-conservative wing, influenced by the populist and nationalist developments of the Freedom Party of Austria and the New Right. The FDP's national-conservative wing has included individuals such as Rainer Zitelmann, Klaus Rainer Röhl, Alexander von Stahl, and Jürgen Möllemann, and was organised as the Liberal Offensive. Möllemann in the particular was noted for his role during the 2002 federal election in attempting to push the party in a right-wing populist direction, albeit to poor electoral results.

During the 2017 federal election, the party called for Germany to adopt an immigration channel using a Canada-style points-based immigration system; spend up to 3% of GDP on defense and international security; phase out the solidarity surcharge tax (which was first levied in 1991 to pay for the costs of absorbing East Germany after German reunification); cut taxes by 30 billion euro (twice the amount of the tax cut proposed by the CDU); and improve road infrastructure by spending 2 billion euro annually for each of the next two decades, to be funded by selling government stakes in Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Telekom, and Deutsche Post. The FDP also called for the improvement of Germany's digital infrastructure, the establishment of a Ministry of Digital Affairs, and greater investment in education. The party also supports allowing dual citizenship (in contrast to the CDU/CSU, which opposes it) but also supports requiring third-generation immigrants to select a single nationality.

The FDP supports the legalization of cannabis in Germany and opposes proposals to heighten Internet surveillance. The FDP supports same-sex marriage in Germany. The FDP supports legalisation of altruistic surrogacy.

The FDP has mixed views on European integration. In its 2009 campaign manifesto, the FDP pledged support for ratification of the Lisbon Treaty as well as EU reforms aimed at enhancing transparency and democratic responsiveness, reducing bureaucracy, establishing stringent curbs on the EU budget, and fully liberalizing the Single Market. At its January 2019 congress ahead of the 2019 European Parliament election, FDP's manifesto called for further EU reforms, including reducing the number of European Commissioners to 18 from the current 28, abolishing the European Economic and Social Committee, and ending the European Parliament's "traveling circus" between Brussels and Strasbourg. Vice chairwoman and Deputy Leader Nicola Beer stated: "We want both more and less Europe."

Electorate
In 1940s and 1950s, the FDP was the only German party strongly in favour of market economy, while the CDU/CSU was still adhering to a "third way" between capitalism and socialism. Initially founded as a party uniting liberals and nationalists, the early FDP wanted former Nazis to be reintegrated into society and demanded a release of Nazi war criminals.

The party's membership has historically been largely male; in 1995, less than one-third of the party's members were women, and in the 1980s women made up less than one-tenth of the party's national executive committee. By the 1990s, the percentage of women on the FDP's national executive committee rose to 20%.

The party tends to draw its support from professionals and self-employed Germans. It lacks consistent support from a voting bloc, such as the trade union membership that supports the SPD or the church membership that supports the CDU/CSU, and thus has historically only garnered a small group of Stammwähler (core voters) who consistently vote for the party.

In the 2021 elections, the FDP was the second-most popular party among voters under age 30; among this demographic, the Greens won 22% of the vote, the FDP 19%, the SPD 17%, the CDU/CSU 11%, Die Linke 8%, and the AfD 8%. According to Deutsche Welle in 2021, voters for both the FDP and the Greens are similar in being younger, politically centrist professionals living in cities, unlike left working-class voters and right Christian voters.

European representation
In the European Parliament the Free Democratic Party sits in the Renew Europe group with five MEPs.

In the European Committee of the Regions, the Free Democratic Party sits in the Renew Europe CoR group, with one full member for the 2020–2025 mandate.

Federal Parliament (Bundestag)
Below are charts of the results that the FDP has secured in each election to the federal Bundestag. Timelines showing the number of seats and percentage of party list votes won are on the right.

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Fax

Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine (or a telecopier), which processes the contents (text or images) as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap, and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form of audio-frequency tones. The receiving fax machine interprets the tones and reconstructs the image, printing a paper copy. Early systems used direct conversions of image darkness to audio tone in a continuous or analog manner. Since the 1980s, most machines transmit an audio-encoded digital representation of the page, using data compression to transmit areas that are all-white or all-black, more quickly.

Initially a niche product, fax machines became ubiquitous in offices in the 1980s and 1990s. They have largely been rendered obsolete as a whole by Internet-based technologies such as email and the World Wide Web, but are still used in some medical administration and law enforcement settings.

Wire transmission
Scottish inventors Matthew Cash and Alexander Bain worked on chemical-mechanical fax-type devices and in 1846 Bain was able to reproduce graphic signs in laboratory experiments. He received British patent 9745 on May 27, 1843, for his "Electric Printing Telegraph". Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain's design and demonstrated a telefax machine. The Pantelegraph was invented by the Italian physicist Giovanni Caselli. He introduced the first commercial telefax service between Paris and Lyon in 1865, some 11 years before the invention of the telephone.

In 1880, English inventor Shelford Bidwell constructed the scanning phototelegraph that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing. An account of Henry Sutton's "telephane" was published in 1896. Around 1900, German physicist Arthur Korn invented the Bildtelegraph, widespread in continental Europe especially following a widely noticed transmission of a wanted-person photograph from Paris to London in 1908, used until the wider distribution of the radiofax. Its main competitors were the Bélinographe by Édouard Belin first, then since the 1930s the Hellschreiber, invented in 1929 by German inventor Rudolf Hell, a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission.

The 1888 invention of the telautograph by Elisha Gray marked a further development in fax technology, allowing users to send signatures over long distances, thus allowing the verification of identification or ownership over long distances.

On May 19, 1924, scientists of the AT&T Corporation "by a new process of transmitting pictures by electricity" sent 15 photographs by telephone from Cleveland to New York City, such photos being suitable for newspaper reproduction. Previously, photographs had been sent over the radio using this process.

The Western Union "Deskfax" fax machine, announced in 1948, was a compact machine that fit comfortably on a desktop, using special spark printer paper.

Wireless transmission
As a designer for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), in 1924, Richard H. Ranger invented the wireless photoradiogram, or transoceanic radio facsimile, the forerunner of today's "fax" machines. A photograph of President Calvin Coolidge sent from New York to London on November 29, 1924, became the first photo picture reproduced by transoceanic radio facsimile. Commercial use of Ranger's product began two years later. Also in 1924, Herbert E. Ives of AT&T transmitted and reconstructed the first color facsimile, a natural-color photograph of silent film star Rudolph Valentino in period costume, using red, green and blue color separations.

Beginning in the late 1930s, the Finch Facsimile system was used to transmit a "radio newspaper" to private homes via commercial AM radio stations and ordinary radio receivers equipped with Finch's printer, which used thermal paper. Sensing a new and potentially golden opportunity, competitors soon entered the field, but the printer and special paper were expensive luxuries, AM radio transmission was very slow and vulnerable to static, and the newspaper was too small. After more than ten years of repeated attempts by Finch and others to establish such a service as a viable business, the public, apparently quite content with its cheaper and much more substantial home-delivered daily newspapers, and with conventional spoken radio bulletins to provide any "hot" news, still showed only a passing curiosity about the new medium.

By the late 1940s, radiofax receivers were sufficiently miniaturized to be fitted beneath the dashboard of Western Union's "Telecar" telegram delivery vehicles.

In the 1960s, the United States Army transmitted the first photograph via satellite facsimile to Puerto Rico from the Deal Test Site using the Courier satellite.

Radio fax is still in limited use today for transmitting weather charts and information to ships at sea. The closely related technology of slow-scan television is still used by amateur radio operators.

Telephone transmission

In 1964, Xerox Corporation introduced (and patented) what many consider to be the first commercialized version of the modern fax machine, under the name (LDX) or Long Distance Xerography. This model was superseded two years later with a unit that would set the standard for fax machines for years to come. Up until this point facsimile machines were very expensive and hard to operate. In 1966, Xerox released the Magnafax Telecopiers, a smaller, 46 lb facsimile machine. This unit was far easier to operate and could be connected to any standard telephone line. This machine was capable of transmitting a letter-sized document in about six minutes. The first sub-minute, digital fax machine was developed by Dacom, which built on digital data compression technology originally developed at Lockheed for satellite communication.

By the late 1970s, many companies around the world (especially Japanese firms) had entered the fax market. Very shortly after this, a new wave of more compact, faster and efficient fax machines would hit the market. Xerox continued to refine the fax machine for years after their ground-breaking first machine. In later years it would be combined with copier equipment to create the hybrid machines we have today that copy, scan and fax. Some of the lesser known capabilities of the Xerox fax technologies included their Ethernet enabled Fax Services on their 8000 workstations in the early 1980s.

Prior to the introduction of the ubiquitous fax machine, one of the first being the Exxon Qwip in the mid-1970s, facsimile machines worked by optical scanning of a document or drawing spinning on a drum. The reflected light, varying in intensity according to the light and dark areas of the document, was focused on a photocell so that the current in a circuit varied with the amount of light. This current was used to control a tone generator (a modulator), the current determining the frequency of the tone produced. This audio tone was then transmitted using an acoustic coupler (a speaker, in this case) attached to the microphone of a common telephone handset. At the receiving end, a handset's speaker was attached to an acoustic coupler (a microphone), and a demodulator converted the varying tone into a variable current that controlled the mechanical movement of a pen or pencil to reproduce the image on a blank sheet of paper on an identical drum rotating at the same rate.

Computer facsimile interface
In 1985, Hank Magnuski, founder of GammaLink, produced the first computer fax board, called GammaFax. Such boards could provide voice telephony via Analog Expansion Bus.

In the 21st century
Although businesses usually maintain some kind of fax capability, the technology has faced increasing competition from Internet-based alternatives. In some countries, because electronic signatures on contracts are not yet recognized by law, while faxed contracts with copies of signatures are, fax machines enjoy continuing support in business. In Japan, faxes are still used extensively as of September 2020 for cultural and   They are available for sending to both domestic and international recipients from over 81% of all convenience stores nationwide. Convenience-store fax machines commonly print the slightly re-sized content of the sent fax in the electronic confirmation-slip, in A4 paper size. Use of fax machines for reporting cases during the COVID-19 pandemic has been criticised in Japan for introducing data errors and delays in reporting, slowing response efforts to contain the spread of infections and hindering the transition to remote work.

In many corporate environments, freestanding fax machines have been replaced by fax servers and other computerized systems capable of receiving and storing incoming faxes electronically, and then routing them to users on paper or via an email (which may be secured). Such systems have the advantage of reducing costs by eliminating unnecessary printouts and reducing the number of inbound analog phone lines needed by an office.

The once ubiquitous fax machine has also begun to disappear from the small office and home office environments. Remotely hosted fax-server services are widely available from VoIP and e-mail providers allowing users to send and receive faxes using their existing e-mail accounts without the need for any hardware or dedicated fax lines. Personal computers have also long been able to handle incoming and outgoing faxes using analog modems or ISDN, eliminating the need for a stand-alone fax machine. These solutions are often ideally suited for users who only very occasionally need to use fax services. In July 2017 the United Kingdom's National Health Service was said to be the world's largest purchaser of fax machines because the digital revolution has largely bypassed it. In June 2018 the Labour Party said that the NHS had at least 11,620 fax machines in operation and in December the Department of Health and Social Care said that no more fax machines could be bought from 2019 and that the existing ones must be replaced by secure email by March 31, 2020.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, generally viewed as digitally advanced in the NHS, was engaged in a process of removing its fax machines in early 2019. This involved quite a lot of e-fax solutions because of the need to communicate with pharmacies and nursing homes which may not have access to the NHS email system and may need something in their paper records.

In 2018 two-thirds of Canadian doctors reported that they primarily used fax machines to communicate with other doctors. Faxes are still seen as safer and more secure and electronic systems are often unable to communicate with each other.

Hospitals are the leading users for fax machines in the United States where some doctors prefer fax machines over emails, often due to concerns about accidentally violating HIPAA. However, fax machines are beginning to decline due to expansion of telehealth as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and virtual visits often replace the need for a patient to fax or mail information to a doctor, since the doctor would receive the information via a telehealth platform such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Capabilities
There are several indicators of fax capabilities: group, class, data transmission rate, and conformance with ITU-T (formerly CCITT) recommendations. Since the 1968 Carterfone decision, most fax machines have been designed to connect to standard PSTN lines and telephone numbers.

Analog
Group 1 and 2 faxes are sent in the same manner as a frame of analog television, with each scanned line transmitted as a continuous analog signal. Horizontal resolution depended upon the quality of the scanner, transmission line, and the printer. Analog fax machines are obsolete and no longer manufactured. ITU-T Recommendations T.2 and T.3 were withdrawn as obsolete in July 1996.

 * Group 1 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendation T.2. Group 1 faxes take six minutes to transmit a single page, with a vertical resolution of 96 scan lines per inch. Group 1 fax machines are obsolete and no longer manufactured.
 * Group 2 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendations T.3 and T.30. Group 2 faxes take three minutes to transmit a single page, with a vertical resolution of 96 scan lines per inch. Group 2 fax machines are almost obsolete, and are no longer manufactured. Group 2 fax machines can interoperate with Group 3 fax machines.

Digital
A major breakthrough in the development of the modern facsimile system was the result of digital technology, where the analog signal from scanners was digitized and then compressed, resulting in the ability to transmit high rates of data across standard phone lines. The first digital fax machine was the Dacom Rapidfax first sold in late 1960s, which incorporated digital data compression technology developed by Lockheed for transmission of images from satellites.

Group 3 and 4 faxes are digital formats and take advantage of digital compression methods to greatly reduce transmission times.

 * Group 3 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendations T.30 and T.4. Group 3 faxes take between 6 and 15 seconds to transmit a single page (not including the initial time for the fax machines to handshake and synchronize). The horizontal and vertical resolutions are allowed by the T.4 standard to vary among a set of fixed resolutions:
 * Horizontal: 100 scan lines per inch
 * Vertical: 100 scan lines per inch ("Basic")
 * Horizontal: 200 or 204 scan lines per inch
 * Vertical: 100 or 98 scan lines per inch ("Standard")
 * Vertical: 200 or 196 scan lines per inch ("Fine")
 * Vertical: 400 or 391 (note not 392) scan lines per inch ("Superfine")
 * Horizontal: 300 scan lines per inch
 * Vertical: 300 scan lines per inch
 * Horizontal: 400 or 408 scan lines per inch
 * Vertical: 400 or 391 scan lines per inch ("Ultrafine")
 * Group 4 faxes conform to the ITU-T Recommendations T.563, T.503, T.521, T.6, T.62, T.70, T.411 to T.417. They are designed to operate over 64 kbit/s digital ISDN circuits. The allowed resolutions, a superset of those in the T.4 recommendation, are specified in the T.6 recommendation.

Fax Over IP (FoIP) can transmit and receive pre-digitized documents at near-realtime speeds using ITU-T recommendation T.38 to send digitised images over an IP network using JPEG compression. T.38 is designed to work with VoIP services and often supported by analog telephone adapters used by legacy fax machines that need to connect through a VoIP service. Scanned documents are limited to the amount of time the user takes to load the document in a scanner and for the device to process a digital file. The resolution can vary from as little as 150 DPI to 9600 DPI or more. This type of faxing is not related to the e-mail–to–fax service that still uses fax modems at least one way.

Class
Computer modems are often designated by a particular fax class, which indicates how much processing is offloaded from the computer's CPU to the fax modem.

 * Class 1 (also known as Class 1.0) fax devices do fax data transfer, while the T.4/T.6 data compression and T.30 session management are performed by software on a controlling computer. This is described in ITU-T recommendation T.31.
 * What is commonly known as "Class 2" is an unofficial class of fax devices that perform T.30 session management themselves, but the T.4/T.6 data compression is performed by software on a controlling computer. Implementations of this "class" are based on draft versions of the standard that eventually significantly evolved to become Class 2.0. All implementations of "Class 2" are manufacturer-specific.
 * Class 2.0 is the official ITU-T version of Class 2 and is commonly known as Class 2.0 to differentiate it from many manufacturer-specific implementations of what is commonly known as "Class 2". It uses a different but standardized command set than the various manufacturer-specific implementations of "Class 2". The relevant ITU-T recommendation is T.32.
 * Class 2.1 is an improvement of Class 2.0 that implements faxing over V.34 (33.6 kbit/s), which boosts faxing speed from fax classes "2" and 2.0, which are limited to 14.4 kbit/s. The relevant ITU-T recommendation is T.32 Amendment 1. Class 2.1 fax devices are referred to as "super G3".

Data transmission rate
Several different telephone-line modulation techniques are used by fax machines. They are negotiated during the fax-modem handshake, and the fax devices will use the highest data rate that both fax devices support, usually a minimum of 14.4 kbit/s for Group 3 fax.

 * {| class="wikitable"

!ITU standard !Released date !Data rates (bit/s) !Modulation method
 * V.27
 * 1988
 * 4800, 2400
 * PSK
 * V.29
 * 1988
 * 9600, 7200, 4800
 * QAM
 * V.17
 * 1991
 * $14,400$, $12,000$, 9600, 7200
 * TCM
 * V.34
 * 1994
 * QAM
 * V.34bis
 * 1998
 * QAM
 * ISDN
 * 1986
 * digital
 * }
 * 1998
 * QAM
 * ISDN
 * 1986
 * digital
 * }
 * digital
 * }
 * }

"Super Group 3" faxes use V.34bis modulation that allows a data rate of up to 33.6 kbit/s.

Compression
As well as specifying the resolution (and allowable physical size) of the image being faxed, the ITU-T T.4 recommendation specifies two compression methods for decreasing the amount of data that needs to be transmitted between the fax machines to transfer the image. The two methods defined in T.4 are: An additional method is specified in T.6: Later, other compression techniques were added as options to ITU-T recommendation T.30, such as the more efficient JBIG (T.82, T.85) for bi-level content, and JPEG (T.81), T.43, MRC (T.44), and T.45 for grayscale, palette, and colour content. Fax machines can negotiate at the start of the T.30 session to use the best technique implemented on both sides.
 * Modified Huffman (MH).
 * Modified READ (MR) (Relative Element Address Designate ), optional.
 * Modified Modified READ (MMR).

Modified Huffman
Modified Huffman (MH), specified in T.4 as the one-dimensional coding scheme, is a codebook-based run-length encoding scheme optimised to efficiently compress whitespace. As most faxes consist mostly of white space, this minimises the transmission time of most faxes. Each line scanned is compressed independently of its predecessor and successor.

Modified READ
Modified READ, specified as an optional two-dimensional coding scheme in T.4, encodes the first scanned line using MH. The next line is compared to the first, the differences determined, and then the differences are encoded and transmitted. This is effective, as most lines differ little from their predecessor. This is not continued to the end of the fax transmission, but only for a limited number of lines until the process is reset, and a new "first line" encoded with MH is produced. This limited number of lines is to prevent errors propagating throughout the whole fax, as the standard does not provide for error correction. This is an optional facility, and some fax machines do not use MR in order to minimise the amount of computation required by the machine. The limited number of lines is 2 for "Standard"-resolution faxes, and 4 for "Fine"-resolution faxes.

Modified Modified READ
The ITU-T T.6 recommendation adds a further compression type of Modified Modified READ (MMR), which simply allows a greater number of lines to be coded by MR than in T.4. This is because T.6 makes the assumption that the transmission is over a circuit with a low number of line errors, such as digital ISDN. In this case, the number of lines for which the differences are encoded is not limited.

JBIG
In 1999, ITU-T recommendation T.30 added JBIG (ITU-T T.82) as another lossless bi-level compression algorithm, or more precisely a "fax profile" subset of JBIG (ITU-T T.85). JBIG-compressed pages result in 20% to 50% faster transmission than MMR-compressed pages, and up to 30 times faster transmission if the page includes halftone images.

JBIG performs adaptive compression, that is, both the encoder and decoder collect statistical information about the transmitted image from the pixels transmitted so far, in order to predict the probability for each next pixel being either black or white. For each new pixel, JBIG looks at ten nearby, previously transmitted pixels. It counts, how often in the past the next pixel has been black or white in the same neighborhood, and estimates from that the probability distribution of the next pixel. This is fed into an arithmetic coder, which adds only a small fraction of a bit to the output sequence if the more probable pixel is then encountered.

The ITU-T T.85 "fax profile" constrains some optional features of the full JBIG standard, such that codecs do not have to keep data about more than the last three pixel rows of an image in memory at any time. This allows the streaming of "endless" images, where the height of the image may not be known until the last row is transmitted.

ITU-T T.30 allows fax machines to negotiate one of two options of the T.85 "fax profile":
 * In "basic mode", the JBIG encoder must split the image into horizontal stripes of 128 lines (parameter L0 = 128) and restart the arithmetic encoder for each stripe.
 * In "option mode", there is no such constraint.

Matsushita Whiteline Skip
A proprietary compression scheme employed on Panasonic fax machines is Matsushita Whiteline Skip (MWS). It can be overlaid on the other compression schemes, but is operative only when two Panasonic machines are communicating with one another. This system detects the blank scanned areas between lines of text, and then compresses several blank scan lines into the data space of a single character. (JBIG implements a similar technique called "typical prediction", if header flag TPBON is set to 1.)

Typical characteristics
Group 3 fax machines transfer one or a few printed or handwritten pages per minute in black-and-white (bitonal) at a resolution of 204×98 (normal) or 204×196 (fine) dots per square inch. The transfer rate is 14.4 kbit/s or higher for modems and some fax machines, but fax machines support speeds beginning with 2400 bit/s and typically operate at 9600 bit/s. The transferred image formats are called ITU-T (formerly CCITT) fax group 3 or 4. Group 3 faxes have the suffix  and the MIME type.

The most basic fax mode transfers in black and white only. The original page is scanned in a resolution of 1728 pixels/line and 1145 lines/page (for A4). The resulting raw data is compressed using a modified Huffman code optimized for written text, achieving average compression factors of around 20. Typically a page needs 10 s for transmission, instead of about three minutes for the same uncompressed raw data of 1728×1145 bits at a speed of 9600 bit/s. The compression method uses a Huffman codebook for run lengths of black and white runs in a single scanned line, and it can also use the fact that two adjacent scanlines are usually quite similar, saving bandwidth by encoding only the differences.

Fax classes denote the way fax programs interact with fax hardware. Available classes include Class 1, Class 2, Class 2.0 and 2.1, and Intel CAS. Many modems support at least class 1 and often either Class 2 or Class 2.0. Which is preferable to use depends on factors such as hardware, software, modem firmware, and expected use.

Printing process
Fax machines from the 1970s to the 1990s often used direct thermal printers with rolls of thermal paper as their printing technology, but since the mid-1990s there has been a transition towards plain-paper faxes: thermal transfer printers, inkjet printers and laser printers.

One of the advantages of inkjet printing is that inkjets can affordably print in color; therefore, many of the inkjet-based fax machines claim to have color fax capability. There is a standard called ITU-T30e (formally ITU-T Recommendation T.30 Annex E ) for faxing in color; however, it is not widely supported, so many of the color fax machines can only fax in color to machines from the same manufacturer.

Stroke speed
Stroke speed in facsimile systems is the rate at which a fixed line perpendicular to the direction of scanning is crossed in one direction by a scanning or recording spot. Stroke speed is usually expressed as a number of strokes per minute. When the fax system scans in both directions, the stroke speed is twice this number. In most conventional 20th century mechanical systems, the stroke speed is equivalent to drum speed.

Fax paper
As a precaution, thermal fax paper is typically not accepted in archives or as documentary evidence in some courts of law unless photocopied. This is because the image-forming coating is eradicable and brittle, and it tends to detach from the medium after a long time in storage.

Fax tone
A CNG tone is an 1100 Hz tone transmitted by a fax machine when it calls another fax machine. Fax tones can cause complications when implementing fax over IP.

Internet fax
One popular alternative is to subscribe to an Internet fax service, allowing users to send and receive faxes from their personal computers using an existing email account. No software, fax server or fax machine is needed. Faxes are received as attached TIFF or PDF files, or in proprietary formats that require the use of the service provider's software. Faxes can be sent or retrieved from anywhere at any time that a user can get Internet access. Some services offer secure faxing to comply with stringent HIPAA and Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act requirements to keep medical information and financial information private and secure. Utilizing a fax service provider does not require paper, a dedicated fax line, or consumable resources.

Another alternative to a physical fax machine is to make use of computer software which allows people to send and receive faxes using their own computers, utilizing fax servers and unified messaging. A virtual (email) fax can be printed out and then signed and scanned back to computer before being emailed. Also the sender can attach a digital signature to the document file.

With the surging popularity of mobile phones, virtual fax machines can now be downloaded as applications for Android and iOS. These applications make use of the phone's internal camera to scan fax documents for upload or they can import from various cloud services.

Related standards

 * T.4 is the umbrella specification for fax. It specifies the standard image sizes, two forms of image-data compression (encoding), the image-data format, and references, T.30 and the various modem standards.
 * T.6 specifies a compression scheme that reduces the time required to transmit an image by roughly 50-percent.
 * T.30 specifies the procedures that a sending and receiving terminal use to set up a fax call, determine the image size, encoding, and transfer speed, the demarcation between pages, and the termination of the call. T.30 also references the various modem standards.
 * V.21, V.27ter, V.29, V.17, V.34: ITU modem standards used in facsimile. The first three were ratified prior to 1980, and were specified in the original T.4 and T.30 standards.  V.34 was published for fax in 1994.
 * T.37 The ITU standard for sending a fax-image file via e-mail to the intended recipient of a fax.
 * T.38 The ITU standard for sending Fax over IP (FoIP).
 * G.711 pass through - this is where the T.30 fax call is carried in a VoIP call encoded as audio. This is sensitive to network packet loss, jitter and clock synchronization. When using voice high-compression encoding techniques such as, but not limited to, G.729, some fax tonal signals may not be correctly transported across the packet network.
 * image/t38 MIME-type
 * SSL Fax An emerging standard that allows a telephone based fax session to negotiate a fax transfer over the internet, but only if both sides support the standard. The standard is partially based on T.30 and is being developed by Hylafax+ developers.

title: Fax