CDU on democracy and the state

The CDU wants to renovate Bremen's public buildings so that they meet the same requirements as private ones. In the party's view, many of these buildings are in poor condition. Public-private partnerships would help finance the work.

The CDU wants to fix up the city's buildings. The CDU says many are in bad shape. The same rules should apply to them as to private builders. Private companies should also be able to help pay.

According to the program, many public buildings lack cleanliness, safety, and modern digital and energy infrastructure. Bremen trade businesses would use new technologies there and so provide practical examples for private construction. For financing, the CDU names public-private partnership models.

The CDU considers the 2019 split of the economics and ports departments a mistake and wants to reunite them. In addition, the state is to take over responsibility for all of Bremen's ports to speed up planning and implementation.

Since 2019 there have been separate departments for the economy and for ports. The CDU wants to merge them again. The state of Bremen should be in charge of all ports. This should make decisions faster.

Concentrating responsibility at the state level is meant to increase transparency and reduce interfaces; the platform calls the current structure of authority, ownership, funding, and responsibility outdated. The CDU will examine merging the port authority (Hansestadt Bremisches Hafenamt) into the port management company bremenports. Such a structure is said to be common at most port locations.

The CDU commits to Bremen remaining a state of its own while wanting to make cooperation with Lower Saxony and surrounding municipalities permanent. The two states are to be developed as a shared "co-working space."

Bremen should remain its own state. But the CDU wants to work more closely with Lower Saxony. This covers business parks and buses and trains, for example. Large park-and-ride lots should be built at the city's edge.

The platform names the joint business park Achim-West as an example and a starting point. In transportation, the public transit network is to keep growing and high-capacity park-and-ride lots are to be built at the city's edge. For the shift in mobility, the CDU considers good cooperation and joint funding in the regional association with neighboring municipalities indispensable.

The CDU wants to relieve Bremen's judiciary, which it considers overstretched, with more young lawyers and judicial assistants. Applications and hearings would also be available online more widely, and prison service jobs made more attractive.

The CDU wants more staff for the courts. Bremen should train many more young lawyers. Judges should get assistants. People should also be able to file court requests online.

The number of legal trainees (Rechtsreferendare) would rise by half to recruit future judges and prosecutors. A new law would allow the hiring of judicial assistants in the state. Certificates of inheritance, enforceable titles and similar documents could be requested online, and online hearings in civil cases would be expanded. In the prison service, the CDU wants more training places and financial incentives such as free health care for staff (Freie Heilfürsorge).

The CDU wants to involve Bremen's Beiräte (district advisory councils) more closely in political decisions, especially in drawing up budgets. It sees the councils as the most important vehicle for political participation in the districts and wants the existing law on district councils to be put into practice.

Bremen has councils in its city districts. People work there as volunteers for their district. The CDU wants these councils to have more say. This matters most when the city plans its money.

The platform calls for cooperation between the councils and the administration as equals. The councils are encouraged to make more frequent use of their option to represent their concerns in parliamentary committees and in the city parliament. At least one member of the Senate (the state government) is to answer questions publicly from the council and residents in every council district each year. In the CDU's view, this volunteer work deserves more recognition.

The CDU wants to give district council members and Ortsämter (district offices) better technology and more staff. An app-based information system, digital meetings, and livestreams are meant to make volunteer work easier and more transparent.

The CDU wants to give district councils better technology. An app should show all documents in one place. Meetings should also be possible online. The district offices should get more staff.

According to the platform, district offices currently send out a great many emails with attachments, which it calls confusing. In the future, meeting dates, documents, and minutes are to be collected in an app, with the city providing the necessary devices free of charge. Council members are to be able to join meetings digitally, and fully digital meetings are also planned so that volunteer office fits better with work and family. Council meetings are to be streamed online through a central service. District offices are to get more staff because, in the CDU's account, many are reaching the limits of their capacity.

The CDU wants to link the district councils with one another, set up a dedicated advisory office for council work, and define which level of government decides what. A street register for all of Bremen is to make clear who is responsible for which street.

District councils should learn more from each other. The CDU wants to create a special advice office for this. It should also be clear who decides what. A list of all streets should show who is in charge of each street.

According to the platform, councils often start from scratch on similar problems even though neighboring districts have already found solutions. A stand-alone office is therefore to connect councils, advise them, offer training, and provide information on new laws, funding programs, and good examples. In the CDU's view, the current coordination through the Senate Chancellery has not worked well. In the street register, the Senate, the city parliament, and the affected councils are to jointly determine responsibility for each street. This is meant to create transparency and speed up decisions, especially on traffic matters.

The CDU wants to give youth councils more money and step up their exchange with the responsible government departments. It justifies this by pointing to the sharp rise in the number of these bodies.

In youth councils, young people do politics for their district. There are more and more of them. The CDU wants to give them more money. Government offices should talk with them more.

The platform describes youth councils as the most important way for children and young people to get involved socially and politically in their district. Because their number has grown considerably in recent years, they are to receive better funding. In addition, contact with the responsible departments is to become more active.

The CDU wants to strengthen the right to petition and make online petitions more user-friendly. In the future, petitions should also be able to aim at changes to laws.

With a petition, citizens can send a request to parliament. The CDU wants to strengthen this right. Online petitions should become easier. Citizens should also be able to push for changes to laws this way.

The platform calls public participation a precondition for political decisions being accepted. Without it, discontent and protests are to be expected, it says. The CDU regards the right to petition as an easily accessible tool that lets citizens exert influence between elections. Above all, the online channels for petitions are to become more user-friendly.

The CDU wants to create a unit for strategy and future analysis in the city hall and set priorities for the Senate's work. Two percent of the budget is to be reserved for pilot projects on which several departments work together.

The CDU wants a new unit in the city hall for planning the future. Experts from all departments should work there. The Senate, Bremen's government, should say clearly what matters most. Two percent of the state's money should go to new joint projects.

In the new unit, specialists from all departments are to launch long-term planning together with the head of the Senate, looking beyond the next election and as far as twenty years ahead. Departments are to set their own priorities because, in the CDU's view, the administration cannot do everything at once; this is meant to avoid duplicate structures and unclear responsibilities. The money held back from the budget is intended solely for innovative projects that cut across departments. Within the administration, ideas are also to be encouraged down to the level of individual policy officers, with funding held out for them.

The CDU wants to make public service in Bremen more attractive in order to counter the shortage of skilled workers and applicants. It plans pay in line with the national average, an inflation bonus, more flexible working conditions and better staff development.

The CDU wants more people to enjoy working for the state. Pay should be as good as the average in Germany. There should be a bonus because prices are high. Staff should be able to work from home more often.

By the end of 2024, all employees are to receive a bonus free of tax and social security contributions to offset inflation. Pay deals reached for the states are to be applied promptly and unchanged to civil servants, and performance-based bonuses are to be used. Remote work, flexible hours and working-time account models are meant to make it easier to combine family and career; overtime is to be compensated with time off where possible. Departments are to build forward-looking staff development with career paths and draw up plans for better working conditions that also help prevent absences. Staff councils are to be closely involved, and exchange programs with the federal government, other states and EU institutions are to connect the administration.

The CDU wants to check first whether new government tasks can be handled without additional positions. Money budgeted for unfilled positions is to go to projects that relieve staff of routine work.

The CDU does not want new jobs for every new government task. First it wants to check if there is another way. For example, with computers or less red tape. Money for empty positions should go to such projects.

According to the program, the administration has so far mostly responded to new tasks by creating new positions, even though it already struggles to find staff. Instead, changes to processes and responsibilities, less bureaucracy and digitalization are meant to unlock synergies. Where staff are lacking, budget funds for open positions are to be used flexibly for digitalization and process projects. These are meant to reduce simple case handling, documentation work and interface problems so that employees can focus on core tasks.

The CDU wants to introduce a participatory budget that lets residents decide directly on part of Bremen's spending. Government departments would set aside budgets for each district for this purpose.

The CDU wants a participatory budget. People in Bremen would decide on part of the money themselves. Each district gets its own budget. The people who live there decide what matters most.

Within a limited budget, residents would rank spending priorities and, where necessary, cut elsewhere. Each Senate department would designate district budgets on which the residents of that district decide. The platform says the scheme must be kept distinct from the district advisory councils (Beiräte) and their block grants, while also seeing a chance to develop those grants further this way.

The CDU wants to merge overlapping responsibilities in Bremen's administration and digitize its processes. In its view, services from a single source work better and cost less.

The CDU wants to make the administration simpler. Often several offices do almost the same work. That should stop. Offices should also work more with computers and less with paper.

The platform uses procurement as an example: besides the budget units of each department, a coordination office at the economics department, a purchasing center at Immobilien Bremen, and an office for green procurement at the environment department are all involved. Merging and standardizing personnel administration, grants, and IT is meant to create synergies. The CDU also wants to end the digitization backlog, arguing that missing interfaces still force staff to transfer data by hand on paper.

The CDU wants to reverse the growth in staff at the political top of the Senate departments and reduce staff and commissioner positions. In return, the tax office, youth welfare office, and housing benefit office would get more personnel.

The CDU wants fewer jobs at the top of government offices. Many new jobs were created there since 2019. Offices that work directly for people should get more staff. Examples are the tax office, the youth welfare office, and the housing benefit office.

According to the platform, the core administration has grown from 14,600 to more than 16,000 positions since 2019, and the Senate Chancellery from 45 to 75. Coordination, planning, commissioner, and staff positions would be reduced through a review of tasks. Tax field audits would be resourced at the level of other states to prevent millions in lost revenue. At the youth welfare office, the CDU says poor resourcing leads to costly residential placements instead of prevention and outpatient support.

The CDU wants to bring strategic management of public real estate together in a single department or agency. It says the current unclear division of tasks leads to long-term, expensive leases.

Bremen owns and rents many buildings. Several offices deal with them today. The CDU wants just one agency to be in charge. Bremen should mainly use its own buildings and rent less at high prices.

After a detailed inventory and a medium-term needs plan, priorities would be set, with the state's own properties taking precedence over rentals. For rentals, low rents, efficient use, low vacancy, and energy efficiency would all count. The buildings with the worst energy ratings would be renovated or given up soon. The CDU expects lower energy costs and an incentive for renovation in Bremen's rental market.