Grüne on democracy and the state

Transport projects that matter beyond a single district are to be decided by the Stadtbürgerschaft (city parliament) after the district councils have been consulted. This is meant to ensure that key traffic corridors can be upgraded and overarching climate goals met.

Some transport projects affect several districts. The city parliament should decide on these. The district councils can give their view first. This should help important projects succeed.

The rule is to apply when a project mainly has cross-district significance, affects several district council areas, or is covered by an overall plan from the Senate. According to the platform, Bremerhaven already works this way. Besides residents, users of the bike paths and sidewalks are to be surveyed, following the example of Humboldtstraße.

The Greens want to make the public sector more attractive and more resilient in crises and to invest in modernizing the administration. Good pay, up-to-date equipment and flexible working hours are meant to help attract qualified staff. The administration is to shift from thinking in terms of jurisdiction to a culture of service.

The Greens want people to enjoy working for the state. So there should be good pay and good equipment. Working hours should become more flexible. One example is the four-day week. Public offices should work together better.

As examples of flexible models, the platform names the four-day week and the six-hour day, along with suitable office concepts. Digitization is to be used to make work more flexible in the interest of employees. The public sector is to build up its skills in foresight, organization and strategic management and receive resources for this. Cooperation across departments, sharing of knowledge and new forms of leadership are seen as the basis of administrative reform. The party wants to keep actively promoting diversity among staff.

The Greens want to make public-sector work more flexible, for example through shared leadership positions and self-organized teams. They also plan a long-term strategy to address the shortage of skilled workers in the public sector.

The Greens want to change how people work in government offices. Two people should be able to share one leadership job. Teams should be able to plan their own work. The Greens also want to check how many skilled workers will be missing in 2030.

Leadership posts are to be open to job-sharing tandems so that people with other commitments can also lead. Self-organized teams are to be tried out where those involved consider them useful. The Greens want to examine whether annual bonus payments can be converted into vacation days. In the next term, the need for skilled workers in 2030 is to be assessed across the whole public sector and publicly owned companies. A cross-departmental strategy with priorities is to follow from this.

The Greens want to expand prevention work against extremism and regard the far right as the greatest threat to democracy. They plan support for schools, a counseling service on conspiracy myths and more research on hostility to democracy.

The Greens want to do more against extremism. Teachers should get help. There should be a counseling service about conspiracy myths. These are false stories about secret powers. The University of Bremen should do more research on this.

Teachers are to be trained to recognize radicalization and respond appropriately, with more outside support brought into schools. A counseling service is meant to keep people from falling for conspiracy narratives, show ways out and help relatives. At the University of Bremen, documentation and research on hostility to democracy, right-wing extremism, Islamism and radicalization is to be stepped up, in cooperation with institutions such as those in Jena and Leipzig. The Greens want to counter politically motivated violence with the tools of the rule of law.

The Greens want to give courts and prosecutors more staff so that cases are concluded faster and the backlog shrinks. The justice system is also to become more child-friendly, and victims are to receive more support during trials.

The Greens want more staff for the courts. Then rulings come faster. The courts should deal better with children. Victims should get more support during a trial.

The staffing target for the justice system is to be met in full through additional permanent positions, covering judges, prosecutors and court staff. For child-friendly justice, the platform cites better training for judges in criminal and family cases. Psychosocial support during proceedings is to be expanded because trials also burden victims emotionally. A legal education program modeled on Berlin's "Wir im Rechtsstaat" project is meant to make the legal system more accessible to people in difficult circumstances and to immigrants.

The Greens want to remove the word "race" from Bremen's state constitution and instead enshrine protection against racist discrimination. Citizens are to be able to enforce their fundamental rights under the state constitution before the Staatsgerichtshof (state constitutional court).

The Greens want to delete the word "race" from the state constitution. It should say instead that the state protects against racism. People should be able to claim their basic rights in the state constitutional court. That is the highest court of the state of Bremen.

The platform justifies the deletion by stating that there are no different human races. The term is to be replaced by explicit protection against racist discrimination. In addition, individuals are to gain a way to assert the fundamental rights of the state constitution before the state constitutional court.

The Greens still want women and men to be equally represented in Bremen's state parliament, the Bürgerschaft. They stick to this even though a legal opinion finds parity rules incompatible with Bremen's election law. In the party's view, diversity in parliament leads to better decisions.

Bremen's parliament should have as many women as men. The Greens still want to reach this goal. A legal report says this does not fit Bremen's election law. The Greens keep their goal anyway.

The platform mentions an existing legal opinion that says parity rules do not fit with Bremen's election law. The party nevertheless keeps its goal and considers binding rules necessary to reach it. It argues that gender equality is part of a democratic society and that the state has to enforce it.

The Greens want to scrap the fee charged at the registry office for formally leaving a church. Leaving is also to become possible online. The party says this strengthens the free choice for or against belonging to a religion.

Today, people pay a fee at the registry office to leave the church. The Greens want to end this fee. People should also be able to leave online. Everyone should decide freely about their religion.

The registry office fee is to be dropped entirely. A digital procedure is to be offered in addition to the existing route. As goals of its religion policy, the party names individual freedom of religion and belief, equal treatment of religious communities, and the separation of church and state.

The Greens want to reform the Bremische Bürgerschaft (Bremen's state parliament) so that it can work more effectively. The Deputationen (committees close to the administration) are to become regular parliamentary committees, and the parliament is to shrink permanently. It is also to become visible who contributed to drafting laws.

The Bürgerschaft is Bremen's parliament. The Greens want to rebuild it. It should work better and get smaller. People should be able to watch meetings online. People should see who helped write a law.

The platform gives as a reason that Bremen's lawmakers hold a local and a state mandate at once, and do so part-time. Planned steps include making a mandate easier to combine with family and work, and an ongoing procedure to determine the necessary number of seats. Committee meetings are to be accessible in hybrid form or by livestream. The influence of interest groups on legislation is to be documented, for example by disclosing third-party written material that was taken into account. An open, machine-readable parliamentary database and on-screen information about speakers and topics during broadcasts are also planned.

The Greens want to give the Beiräte (elected neighborhood councils) more staff and funding. Members are to be able to pause their mandate for a time so that more people feel able to take on such a volunteer office. The queer policy advisory council is also to be upgraded.

Beiräte are elected councils in Bremen's neighborhoods. The Greens want to give them more money and staff. Members should be able to take a break. Another person fills in during that time. Pay per meeting should rise from 25 to 30 euros.

The platform names illness, caring for relatives, parenthood, or a semester abroad as reasons for a pause; the next person on the election list steps in. The neighborhood budget for transport is to grow, and a new budget for climate protection and adaptation is to be adequately funded. Local district offices are to get Wi-Fi and equipment for hybrid and streamed meetings, along with training and more online outreach. The queer policy advisory council is to receive higher expense allowances and its own budget for travel and expert opinions.

The Greens want to lower the voting age in Bremen to 14 and the age for standing as a candidate to 16. They argue that young people live longest with the consequences of political decisions and are outnumbered by older voters.

The Greens want young people to vote from age 14. From age 16 they should be able to run for office too. The party says politics affects young people for a long time. Every district should also get a youth parliament.

The right to vote would apply from age 14 in the coming legislative term. The age for standing as a candidate would drop to 16, and the party wants to look at lowering it further. Every district would get a youth parliament with its own budget. The project "Jugend im Parlament" (Youth in Parliament) would become permanent so that young people can also take part at state level.

The Greens want to use the Bundesrat to give everyone whose life is centered in Bremen the right to vote in local and state elections. They also want elections to be easier to access, for example through barrier-free polling places and multilingual election mail.

The Greens want everyone who lives in Bremen to be able to vote there. That includes people without a German passport. Polling places should be easy to reach for everyone. Election mail should come in several languages and in plain language.

The Greens plan a Bundesrat initiative for the wider right to vote. Separately, the Bremer Rat für Integration (Bremen Integration Council) would get more powers and work more closely with the parliaments. All polling places would be barrier-free, and ballot templates would be available everywhere. By 2027, early in-person voting would be possible in every district at least two weeks before election day, and mobile election boards would also make home visits. The plan also includes election advice sessions, door-to-door election scouts, awareness teams at counting centers, and more training and higher pay for heads of election boards.

The Greens want to quickly put the results of the statewide engagement strategy into practice and make volunteering more visible and accessible. This includes the volunteer card, training, and a higher tax-free volunteer allowance at the federal level.

Many people in Bremen help others for free. The Greens want to give this work more recognition. The volunteer card with its discounts should stay and become better known. Volunteers should get good, low-cost training.

The Ehrenamtskarte (volunteer card) would continue with new partners and become more attractive to younger volunteers. Volunteers and their organizations would get affordable training, and the party backs a shared place for advice and exchange. In schools, service learning would bring young people into contact with volunteering early. At the federal level, the Greens want to raise the Ehrenamtspauschale (tax-free volunteer allowance) and simplify tax and nonprofit law.

The Greens propose making May 8 and March 8 public holidays in Bremen. They justify this with the historical importance of both days.

The Greens want two new public holidays in Bremen. The first is May 8. On that day Nazi rule ended. The second is March 8, Women's Day.

In the platform, May 8 stands for liberation from National Socialism. March 8 is International Women's Day. Both days would become public holidays in the state of Bremen.

The Greens want to convert the ports in Bremerhaven that currently belong to the city of Bremen into ports of the state. In the platform's view, it is an artificial situation for one city to hold sovereign territory inside another. The change is also meant to improve relations between Bremen and Bremerhaven.

Some ports in Bremerhaven belong to the city of Bremen. The Greens want to change that. The ports should belong to the state instead. This should improve relations between the two cities.

The ports are to be run as state ports located on the territory of the city of Bremerhaven. The platform points out that the current arrangement has existed for more than 75 years. The Greens expect the conversion to clearly improve relations between the state's two cities.