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Fraction, parliamentary party or parliamentary group is a term used to refer to the representation of a political party or electoral fusion of parties within a legislative assembly, this is a parliament, but also a city council.
The term especially applies to Germany (where the term fraktion is used), Switzerland (fraction/fraktion/frazione), to Austria (the term club), Belgium (fractie/fraction/fraktion) and the Netherlands (fractie) which all have recognized multiparty systems and strong party discipline. Here organizing parliamentary parties are the only way to gain financial and personal support for parties and for MPs to join parliamentary committees. Parliamentary parties have chairs, which are often important political players. For parties who are not in government, the chair is often the party's political leader. Some parliamentary parties such as the German Bündnis 90/Die Grünen has a two member chair. Parliamentary parties often use party discipline to control the votes of their members. MPs can also chose to leave their own party and set up their own fraction. The Dutch parliament currently has five such one person parliamentary parties.
The European Parliament party group are similar to parliamentary parties. They are more regulated than other kinds of parliamentary parties: to gain financial support or to join committes, each parliamentary group must consist of no less than 19 MEPs from five different EU member states have to be member.
In an Australian context, the parliamentary party is the body of MPs elected on behalf of the party, as opposed to party officials and the mass membership. Generally, the parliamentary component of the party has a degree of independence from the remainder of the party, since it is felt that it would be improper for elected MPs to take instruction from non-elected party officials, or for MPs elected by the electorate to take instruction from the small subset of the electorate which are party members. However, the exact relation between the parliamentary party and the non-parliamentary party varies from party to party.
Within some communist parties the term was used to refer to factions.
(Communist Party of Great Britain, 1922.)
The Red Army Faction, for example, should be correctly translated from the German as Red Army Fraction, although this name is not widely used.