CDU on democracy and the state

The CDU supports a compulsory year of service for all young people, which it calls the Deutschlandjahr. In its view, this would foster community spirit, responsibility and solidarity.

All young people should serve the community for one year. The CDU calls this the Germany Year. The service would be required. Until then, the CDU wants more places in voluntary services.

Until the mandatory year is introduced, the CDU wants to secure state funding for the organizations that run youth voluntary services. The number of places in these services is also to grow.

The CDU wants to shorten court proceedings through specialization and fast-track procedures. The justice system is to work digitally and use artificial intelligence as a tool, while decisions stay with humans.

The CDU wants courts to decide faster. There should be more specialized courts. The justice system should work digitally. Artificial intelligence should help, but people still decide.

The Commercial Court, the cybercrime center, specialized asylum chambers and the Häuser des Jugendrechts (youth justice centers) are to be expanded; the CDU expects the federal government to set suitable rules for faster proceedings. Digital files, automated service of documents and secure communication channels are to become standard, with AI helping mainly in mass proceedings. A statewide service portal is to give information on services and responsibilities. Legal education is to be reformed, including an integrated bachelor's degree and a more practical legal clerkship. Recent staff increases are to be made permanent according to need, and the school program "Rechtsstaat macht Schule" is to be expanded statewide.

The CDU wants to put one member of the state government in charge of coordinating support for volunteering and to relieve clubs of bureaucracy. The volunteer card is to be improved and funding for youth volunteer services increased.

Many people volunteer in clubs. The CDU wants to support them better. One member of the government should take care of this. Clubs should have less paperwork.

The proposals of the Normenkontrollrat (regulatory review council) for cutting red tape for clubs and volunteers are to be implemented. At the EU level, the CDU wants to push for practical rules, for example on data protection. The courts that keep the register of associations are to offer more advice and service. The volunteer card tested in pilot regions is to be improved and simplified together with clubs and municipalities, and the youth leader card "Juleica" is to be upgraded. At the federal level, the CDU wants volunteering to be better recognized, including in tax law.

The CDU wants to give public agencies more discretion so they can decide faster and more practically. At the same time, all state tasks are to be reviewed so that government limits itself to its essential functions.

The CDU wants public offices to decide more freely. Decisions should be faster. There should be less bureaucracy. The state should only do what is really needed.

The plan is for an administrative culture focused on solutions that rewards bold decisions and unconventional approaches. A comprehensive review of tasks based on the principle of subsidiarity is to put everything the state currently does under scrutiny. Government should act only where it is necessary and offers real added value for society. The CDU expects this to make the state more capable in its core tasks.

The CDU wants a leaner state and aims to cut staff in the core administration by ten percent within five years. Responsibilities are to be clearly assigned and duplicate structures removed. The party cites demographic change and digitalization as reasons.

The CDU wants a smaller administration. In five years, it should have ten percent fewer staff. Nobody should be fired. Jobs go away when people retire. Agencies should not do the same work twice.

The staff reduction is to happen through natural turnover, mainly the retirement of the baby-boom generation. Decisions are to be concentrated on one level of government wherever possible, and the CDU rejects parallel structures. Existing state commissioners and agencies are to be reviewed as to whether and to what extent they are needed. Agencies are also to be relocated to rural areas to ease pressure on urban centers and strengthen the regions.

The CDU wants to review all state regulations for necessity and generally give laws an expiration date. For every new rule, two old ones are to be dropped, and state law should not go beyond federal and EU requirements. The party wants to abolish the state Freedom of Information Act.

The CDU wants fewer rules in the state. Laws should apply only for a set time. After that they end on their own unless someone extends them. For every new rule, two old ones should go. The law on information from public offices should go too.

Time-limited laws and ordinances are to expire automatically unless expressly extended; before that, an independent external body is to assess their costs, benefits and effectiveness. Thresholds for regulations are to be raised across the board. New rules are to be tested on a small scale in regulatory sandboxes before statewide rollout. The platform calls the state Freedom of Information Act a bureaucratic monster. Public procurement is also to become simpler, faster and more digital, and awards should be based not only on the lowest price but also on function, innovation and the interests of regional small and mid-sized businesses.

The CDU rejects the right of associations to bring lawsuits and wants to push for its removal at all levels. Only those directly affected should be able to sue. In addition, the administrative objection procedure is to be dropped in as many areas as possible to speed things up.

Today, associations can sue against some projects. The CDU wants to end that. Only people who are affected themselves should be able to sue. The formal objection to official decisions should often go away too. This should make procedures faster.

In the platform's view, projects important to the state must not be delayed or blocked by uninvolved parties. For projects of general importance, the CDU wants to make greater use of Legalplanung, meaning approval of a project directly by statute. Dropping the objection procedure is meant to cut processing times and administrative costs and deliver legal certainty sooner.

The CDU wants every constituency to keep its directly elected representative, unlike under federal election law. To shrink the state parliament, it is open to strengthening the element of voting for individual candidates. Proven forms of dialogue-based citizen participation are to be kept.

Every district should keep its directly elected member of parliament. The state parliament should get smaller. For that, voting for individual people can become more important. Citizens should still have a say. Public offices and schools should write by the official spelling rules.

The platform argues that all parts of the state should be adequately represented. There must therefore be no constituencies without a directly elected member. In addition, the rules and recommendations of the Council for German Orthography are to be binding in state agencies, ministries and schools.

The CDU promises public-sector employees good working conditions and appropriate pay and commits to career civil servants for sovereign tasks. Fixed-term contracts without objective grounds are to be reduced further. To attract young talent, the lowest pay grades are to be phased out.

The CDU wants good work and fair pay in the public service. There should be fewer fixed-term contracts without a reason. The lowest pay grades should go away. People who want to should be able to work longer. Civil servants should get medical costs paid back faster.

Applications for Beihilfe (the state's medical cost reimbursement for civil servants) are to be processed faster so that staff do not have to advance large sums when ill. Voluntary work beyond the age limit is to be encouraged, and lifetime working-time accounts are to be made possible for civil servants and judges. Pay grades below E 5 are to be phased out, and all positions are to get an onboarding process. In the states' collective bargaining, the CDU wants a modernized pay scale, especially for technical and scientific professions. Job offers outside urban centers are to be expanded.

The CDU wants to give municipalities more responsibility of their own and limit statewide standards to the essentials. Approval procedures are to be replaced by trust-based rules and self-monitoring. At the same time, municipalities are to be relieved of tasks and cooperate more.

Towns should decide more on their own. The state should set fewer detailed rules. Instead of long approvals, there should be more trust. Towns should do office work together. They should get money as an incentive for that.

The Municipal Regulatory Exemption Act is to be followed by further exemptions from state requirements. Relations between the federal government, the state and municipalities are to follow subsidiarity more closely, meaning decisions as close to citizens as possible. Financial incentives are to encourage municipalities to cooperate on administrative services; municipal administrative associations are to be strengthened, and a competence center for rural areas is to provide advice. Digital services are to be pooled, and internal services such as accounting and personnel are to be handled centrally in shared service centers. The grant system is to become leaner, simpler and digital.

The CDU wants to use the d’Hondt counting method again in local elections. It aims to counter what it sees as the fragmentation of municipal and county councils. The goal is to keep local government able to function.

In local elections, votes are turned into seats. The CDU wants to use an earlier method for this again. It is called d’Hondt. The CDU thinks there are too many small groups in the councils. That should change.

D’Hondt is a method for converting votes into seats. The platform justifies the return by saying municipal and county councils are too fragmented. The CDU sees this as strengthening representative democracy at the local level.

The CDU wants state grants to civil society organizations to be geared more toward the general public interest. In its view, citizens' engagement rather than state involvement should be at the center. Private donations are to become easier and get better tax treatment.

Clubs and initiatives get money from the state. The CDU wants to hand out this money differently. It should serve the good of everyone more. In return, private donations should become easier. Donors should be able to save more on taxes.

The platform calls civic engagement indispensable for democracy and wants to limit state influence on it. Donations from private individuals are to involve less red tape. The CDU wants to push for more favorable tax treatment. This is meant to make initiatives more independent and let them grow from among citizens.