House of Representatives | Voting without a pass: red-green-red long-term project without a timetable

An electoral law reform sought by the red-green-red coalition would enable 400,000 people to go to the ballot box. Photo: dpa/Sebastian Christoph Gollnow Has the Berlin state government committed itself to the next legally sensitive project in addition to the socialization of large housing stocks? The recent debate about extending the right to vote for people without German citizenship at least suggests that “there are some tough things to drill.” Even left-wing top candidate Elif Eralp told the “Taz”. But they want to push the debate forward and take the first concrete steps.

»People who live here have all the responsibilities, but are not allowed to vote. This is a democratic problem,” said Eralp. The SPD MP Orkan Özdemir points out to “nd” that the current electoral law is a one-way street. People who have lived in Berlin for more than five years are “specifically affected by political decisions that our city makes.” But they could not have the same influence on these decisions. »People who live in our city should have the opportunity to have a say in political and structural issues in our city. Education, transport and urban development affect all Berliners. Giving your perspectives a voice is therefore logical," said Özdemir.

If you take the Left, the Greens and the SPD at their word, they want to “strongly advocate for the introduction of active and passive voting rights at local and state level within the scope of our competences for all people after five years of residence in Germany”. The parliamentary group leaders did not agree on an implementation that would have an impact, for example in the next Berlin election, in their exploratory paper. It's different when it comes to socialization: here the parties have already decided when a corresponding law should come and when it should come into force. It remains to be seen whether the parties will agree on concrete steps towards electoral law reform in the coalition agreement and then take action. As long as the paragraph remains a symbolic confession. Around 400,000 people living in Berlin would be affected.

Bringing the project into line with the current legal situation is unlikely to be easy anyway. Constitutional concerns arise on two levels. First of all, there is the framework of the Basic Law into which a reform would have to fit. “All state power comes from the people,” it says, particularly through elections and votes. So what is the people in the sense of the constitution? Elif Eralp, former spokeswoman for migration and participation for her group, says that this is a matter of interpretation. “In my view, there is no need to change the constitution,” said Eralp. There is no alternative to this view from a pragmatic point of view. After all, there is no corresponding majority in sight in the federal government.

According to the left-wing politician, it is contemporary to understand the concept of people in the sense of a population in an area of ​​state sovereignty. This means that everyone living in Berlin would have the right to take part in elections for the House of Representatives and the district council assemblies. However, the Left, the Greens and the SPD restrict this: if they have already been in Germany for five years.

»Education, transport and urban development affect all Berliners. Giving your perspectives a voice is therefore logical.«

According to an overview by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in 2014 Germany was already part of a minority of 13 of the then 28 member states that excluded local voting rights for citizens of third countries. In Belgium you could therefore take part in local elections after five years of residence. In the Netherlands, third-country nationals were also able to run for municipal elections themselves. Denmark, Estonia, Portugal and Sweden only required a three-year stay to gain the right to vote. The EU itself only stipulates voting rights at the local level for citizens of EU states. The regulation for third-country nationals lies within the sovereignty of the nation states.

At this level, the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court from 1990 is considered authoritative in Germany. At that time, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein wanted to introduce voting rights for people without German citizenship. According to the Federal Constitutional Court, the people is the sum of German citizens. But there are constitutional lawyers who do not see the decision set in stone.

“The 1990 decision was never without controversy,” said Fabian Michl, professor of public law at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. He believes it is possible "that a completely reconstituted court would make a new decision 36 years later." According to him, the Berlin project is risky, but also an opportunity to clarify "how political participation can be made possible for non-citizens." Even if this question is much more urgent today, a legal justification remains difficult, precisely because the court made its decision quite clearly in 1990, said Michl.

It is hardly conceivable that such a clarification will be finalized by the highest court in the coming legislative period. One way or another, the Berlin state constitution would have to be changed beforehand. Because it says: “The bearer of public power is the entirety of Germans who reside in Berlin.” That should leave little room for interpretation. The House of Representatives can only change the state constitution with a two-thirds majority. For this, the Left, the Greens and the SPD would depend on the votes of the CDU. The current governing mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) has already made it clear that his party “would never agree”.

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