Berlin's Governing Mayor Kai Wegner considers the Red-Green-Red idea of giving all foreigners the right to vote after five years of residence to be unworkable. “Fortunately, the right to vote is not something that can be changed at will,” writes the CDU politician on Facebook. “It is a fundamental democratic right that is tied to German citizenship.” An exception only applies to EU citizens in local elections.
“As early as 1990, the Federal Constitutional Court made it clear that the states were not allowed to introduce general voting rights for foreigners,” said Wegner. The Left and its possible coalition partners could therefore simply pass such a right to vote neither for the House of Representatives nor for the district council assemblies by state law.
According to Wegner's assessment, what would be necessary is “at least” a change to the Basic Law with two-thirds majorities in the Bundestag and Bundesrat - which is not in sight. “And even then, fundamental constitutional questions remained.” The CDU will never agree to this.
The Berlin Senator for Economic Affairs and former head of the SPD, Franziska Giffey, also sharply criticized the planned change in electoral law. “The right to vote at the state level has so far rightly been reserved for people with German citizenship – because it is a valuable asset of our democracy,” said Giffey to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “In my view, the unconditional introduction of active and passive voting rights at local and state level for all people after five years of residence in Germany contradicts the constitutive principles of our country.”
Giffey emphasizes: Those who are given the right to vote “should have a command of the German language and have proven that they are committed to the free-democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany.” As district mayor of Neukölln, she herself was very happy to naturalize around 3,000 people. But that's going too far. "There is a danger that the fringes - both the left and the right - will continue to grow stronger. The shocking images from France should be a warning to us."
Because of its fundamental importance, Giffey believes that a vote by SPD members on a coalition agreement is inevitable. "The formation of a government in Berlin is a directional decision for the SPD. Such a decision must be supported by the broad range of its members. That is why I clearly demand a vote from all Berlin SPD members on the coalition agreement." The negotiations must also play a much greater role than before, “how all the wishes and promises are to be financed in a budget that actually requires savings.”
In their exploratory paper presented last Saturday, the Left, the Greens and the SPD in Berlin stated, among other things: “We are strongly committed to the introduction of active and passive voting rights at the local and state level within the framework of our competences for all people after five years of residence in Germany.”
This would probably also require a change to the Berlin state constitution, which would also require a two-thirds majority. Article two states: "The bearer of public power is the entirety of Germans who have their residence in Berlin. According to this constitution, they exercise their will directly by election to the people's representation and by voting, indirectly through the people's representation."
