CDU on democracy and the state

The CDU wants to keep adding staff at courts and public prosecutors' offices and push ahead with digitizing the justice system. Electronic case files are to be introduced at all courts by 2026 at the latest. All court locations in the state are to be kept.

The CDU wants more staff for courts and prosecutors. The justice system should become more digital. By 2026, all courts should work with electronic files. All courts in the state should stay where they are.

The staffing increase is to include court service units and court officers; the CDU wants to respond to new tasks with additional positions. Recruitment is to specifically address people with an immigrant background. Citizens are to get simple digital access to justice authorities, and online hearings are to be used especially in civil cases. Modernization of court buildings will continue, and useful specialization is to be examined.

The CDU wants to write the fight against antisemitism into the state constitution and back it with an action plan. Schools are to be required to visit a memorial site of the persecution of Jews and discuss the visit in class.

The CDU wants to fight hatred of Jews. This should be a goal in the state constitution. All school classes should visit a memorial site. There they learn about the persecution of Jews.

The platform bases the state goal on Germany's historical responsibility. The CDU adopts the working definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and wants it to gain broad acceptance as a basis. The work of the antisemitism commissioner is to be strengthened. Visiting a memorial site, along with classroom follow-up, is to become a mandatory part of schooling. According to the platform, younger people should come into contact with Jewish life early on.

The CDU wants a routine inquiry with the Verfassungsschutz (domestic intelligence agency) for people applying to work in public service. It also wants to examine how opponents of the constitution can be removed from service more quickly after being hired.

People who want to work for the state should be checked. The employer should always ask the domestic intelligence agency. The CDU wants to remove enemies of the constitution from public service faster. It wants to check how this can be done.

According to the platform, opponents of the constitution in public service are currently only an isolated problem, but the administration should be able to act quickly in such cases. The routine inquiry is to apply to everyone seeking a public service job. Loyalty to the constitution is to become a topic in training for managers. The CDU wants to examine faster removal of people who have already been hired.

The CDU wants to recruit more young staff for the state civil service, since 30 percent of the workforce will retire within the next ten years. Flexible working arrangements, appropriate pay and more training are meant to help.

Many state employees will retire soon. So the CDU wants to win new staff. Work should become more flexible, for example from home. Civil servants should get the same pay raises as other public employees.

Collective pay agreements are to apply to civil servants without delay and in full. Recruitment efforts are to be stepped up, especially on social media, and career changers are to play a bigger role. More people with disabilities are to work in the public sector. The CDU wants to agree on flexible working times and places with the unions. Training, especially on digital topics, is to be expanded, and staff are to keep the option of starting a dual study program. Health management is to be secured and adapted to working from home.

The CDU wants to involve citizens earlier in major projects while introducing a duty to cooperate that also applies to environmental groups. Objections that were deliberately held back are no longer to count once the deadline has passed.

The CDU wants to ask citizens earlier about big projects. Those who take part must also cooperate in time. This also applies to environmental groups. Objections held back on purpose should not succeed.

For major projects, participation is to begin before the actual permitting procedure, and in multi-stage procedures it is to happen at the same time, coordinated by one authority. Uniform national guidelines and legal bases are to be created for this. At federal level, the CDU wants late objections to be disregarded unless the objector shows they are neither abusive nor in bad faith (substantive preclusion). Raising an objection for the first time in legal proceedings is to remain possible in principle. The federal government is to regulate the rights and duties of associations entitled to sue, and European law is to be reviewed. The program expects greater acceptance and less strain on the courts.

The CDU rules out forced mergers of municipalities. Instead it wants to support voluntary mergers and cooperation between municipalities. Municipalities are also to get more leeway to shape their own affairs.

The CDU does not want to merge towns against their will. Towns may join together if they choose to. They should also work together more. They should decide more things themselves.

Municipalities are to decide in their main bylaws how large their council is. The CDU wants to review whether the municipal code fits municipalities of different sizes. The fiscal equalization act is to be evaluated with a view to a symmetrical distribution of funds. State development planning and local and county planning are to be linked more closely to speed up planning. Local civic education work is also to receive more support.

The CDU wants to let local politicians take time off in special life situations without losing their seat. In addition, meetings are to be possible permanently in digital or hybrid form, and compensation is to be appropriate.

People in local politics should be able to take a break. They should keep their seat during that time. Meetings should also be possible online. Pay for the work should be fair.

More flexible rules for substitutes are meant to help with the time-off option. Meetings of local bodies are to be possible digitally or in hybrid form on a permanent basis, and the CDU wants to give more help with putting this into practice. It seeks appropriate compensation for both volunteer and full-time local offices.

The CDU wants to introduce an electoral threshold in local elections and raise the minimum size for council caucuses, for example to four members in county councils. Seats are to be allocated by the d'Hondt method in the future. According to the platform, the aim is to make forming majorities easier.

The CDU wants a threshold in local elections. This means parties with very few votes get no seats. A caucus in a county council should have at least four members. Seats should be counted in a different way.

The municipal code and the county code are to be amended for this. Seat counting is to switch to d'Hondt, a calculation method that tends to favor larger parties. The minimum number of members for caucus status is to be four in county councils, for example. The platform justifies the switch by saying it makes majorities easier to form.

The CDU wants to replace the current thresholds, which are graduated by population, with uniform values across the state. A 15 percent threshold is to apply to citizens' initiatives and 30 percent to local referendums.

In a citizens' initiative, people collect signatures to get a vote. Today the number needed depends on the size of the town. The CDU wants the same number everywhere: 15 percent. For the vote itself, 30 percent should be needed.

A quorum is the minimum share of signatures or votes that must be reached. Today these values depend on a municipality's population. In the future there is to be a uniform 15 percent for citizens' initiatives and a uniform 30 percent for local referendums. The question put to a vote is to be worded simply and clearly.

The CDU wants to amend the municipal code so that full-time mayors are no longer elected directly by residents but once again chosen by the elected councils.

Today, citizens elect full-time mayors directly. The CDU wants to change that. The local council should elect the mayor. That is how it was done in the past.

The change concerns full-time mayors in municipalities and cities. In the future, municipal councils or city assemblies would be responsible for the election. The municipal code is to be amended for this purpose.

The CDU wants to distribute new state institutions so that rural areas are also considered. It also wants to attract federal agencies and federal research institutions to Schleswig-Holstein.

New state offices should not only be in big cities. Rural areas should get some too. The CDU also wants to bring federal offices to Schleswig-Holstein.

The platform notes that the federal government plans to place new agencies and departmental research preferably in structurally weak regions, especially small and mid-sized towns. The CDU wants to work to win such institutions for Schleswig-Holstein. It advocates an even spread of federal institutions across Germany.

The CDU wants to create a legitimized, direct representative body for children and young people at the state level. It also wants to examine whether more uniform statewide standards are possible for involving young people in municipal decisions.

The CDU wants to create a body that speaks for children and young people in the state. In towns and cities, young people should have more say. The CDU wants to check whether similar rules can apply everywhere.

Children and young people already have to be involved in municipal planning that affects them, but according to the platform this does not happen equally everywhere. The CDU wants to bring these participation rights to life. The new state-level body is to be supported by the Landesjugendring (state youth council). The platform cites the state student councils as a model, since they already fill this role in the school context.

The CDU wants political parties, their youth organizations and local branches to be able to use public buildings for events, and wants to set this out in law. It also wants to raise voter turnout, especially in precincts where few people vote.

Parties often struggle to find rooms for events. The CDU wants parties to be allowed to use public buildings. This should be written into a law. It also wants more people to vote.

According to the platform, it has become harder in recent years for parties to find suitable venues, partly because public buildings are often unavailable. Together with the state commissioner for civic education, plans are to be drawn up for precincts with low turnout. Easy-access ways of casting a ballot are to be examined. The CDU also sees political youth organizations as sharing responsibility here.

The CDU wants organizations that receive state money for promoting democracy to commit to the free democratic basic order. The aim is to prevent public funds from benefiting anti-constitutional activities.

Some groups get state money for democracy projects. The CDU wants these groups to commit to the constitution. The constitution holds the most important rules of the state. Enemies of the constitution should get no state money.

The demand applies to organizations that receive state funds as part of democracy-promotion measures. At the same time, the CDU wants to give these recipients more support, especially the state commissioner for civic education. The commissioner's programs are to be offered across the entire state.

The CDU wants the rights of national minorities written into the Grundgesetz (Basic Law, Germany's constitution). It also backs the demands of the European Minority SafePack Initiative.

The CDU wants minority rights written into the Basic Law. The Basic Law is Germany's constitution. The party also supports a European initiative for minorities. It is called Minority SafePack.

The Minority SafePack Initiative is a European citizens' initiative calling for more protection of national and linguistic minorities in the EU. The CDU declares its support for those demands. At the federal level, it wants to push for minority rights to be anchored in the constitution.

The CDU wants the preamble of Schleswig-Holstein's state constitution to include a reference to God. It points to the joint effort by several religions in support of this goal.

The CDU wants to change the state constitution. The opening part should mention God. Several religions have worked for this. The CDU wants to keep supporting it.

The party says it looks back with gratitude on the interfaith campaign for this cause. It announces that it will keep working toward it. The reference is to be placed in the preamble, the introductory part of the constitution.