Linke on democracy and the state

The Left wants to do without expensive major events and symbolic large-scale projects and spend less on surveillance cameras. The money is to go to social services and infrastructure. The administration is to become more digital and efficient.

The Left does not want to spend money on expensive big projects. There should also be less money for surveillance cameras. The money should go to social services. Government offices should work faster and more digitally.

According to the program, prestige events and symbolic large projects benefit only a minority of the population, so the Left wants to drop them. Spending on video surveillance is to fall and be shifted to social services. The administrative reform is to be carried out and the administration digitized. The party wants to gain room for investment in a social city and in infrastructure this way. It also announces participation formats such as neighborhood councils, tenant assemblies, and summits for civic initiatives.

The Left wants to develop the city together with residents and give them more influence. Referendum results would be implemented, neighborhood management continued, and early, open-ended public participation held before every zoning plan.

The Left wants people to have more say in city planning. Referendum results should be carried out. Before every building plan, there should be a talk with local people. Each borough should have a contact person for this. Local groups should get money and spaces.

The platform wants to tie neighborhood management more closely into borough structures and reliably fund important projects in areas where the program is ending. Cooperation among the state, boroughs, non-profit-oriented companies and civil society would be made more permanent, modeled on Haus der Statistik and the Dragoner-Areal, with earmarked budget lines and real-world labs, eventually one in each borough. The participation guidelines would be revised, and participation made easy to access and sensitive to discrimination. A pilot project would create Senate-funded "third places" run as public-common partnerships. The Senate would stop regularly taking zoning authority away from the boroughs. The Left also backs a task force for threatened spaces and an arbitration body for urban development disputes.

The Left wants to strengthen the legal standing of seniors' representative bodies and apply it uniformly in all districts. To do this, the Seniorenmitwirkungsgesetz (seniors' participation law) would be revised.

The Left wants to strengthen the bodies that speak for older people. They should be allowed to speak and make motions in district assemblies. Their election should be on the same day as the Berlin election. That way more people should vote.

The bodies would get the right to file motions and speak in every district assembly, along with adequate resources. Their election would be held together with the state parliament election to raise turnout. The party wants to clear up contradictions between the seniors' participation law and the district administration law. More older people with a migration background would be recruited for this volunteer work.

The Left wants to involve young people more in political decisions, for example through speaking rights in district bodies, stronger youth parliaments and fixed youth budgets in every district. It stands by voting at 16 and is looking into lowering the voting age further. The reasoning is that children and young people are underrepresented in politics.

The Left wants young people to have more say. They should be allowed to speak in district bodies. Every district should have money that young people decide on. Voting at 16 should stay. The party is checking whether even younger people could vote.

Young people's right to vote would depend on where they live rather than on German citizenship. District assemblies, youth welfare committees and other bodies would have binding speaking and participation rights for young people. District children's and youth parliaments would get far-reaching rights, and the youth democracy fund would get more money. Berlin's youth support and participation law (JugFöG) would be developed further, adequately funded and backed by coordination offices in the youth welfare offices. At the federal level, the party calls for children's rights in the constitution and opposes bringing back compulsory military service.

The Left wants to preserve and expand neighborhood centers, community houses, meeting places and advice centers. Volunteering is to receive more support, space and recognition. In new residential districts, space for social facilities is to be planned in from the start.

Berlin has many meeting places in its neighborhoods. The Left wants to keep these places and create more. Volunteers should get more help and rooms. New schools should also be open to the neighborhood. The districts should get enough money for this.

These local facilities are to be accessible, barrier-free and culturally sensitive. Outreach neighborhood work, which according to the program the CDU-SPD Senate ended, is to continue. The party wants to develop support for civic engagement further together with those involved. New school buildings are to double as open places for culture and engagement in the neighborhood. The districts are to be funded well enough to provide social infrastructure in newly built quarters.

The Left wants a transparency law that obliges authorities to publish information within fixed deadlines and in machine-readable form. Access should be free of charge, and publicly funded media content should remain available for the long term.

The Left wants a transparency law for Berlin. Public offices would then have to publish information on their own. This should happen quickly and in a usable form. Access should cost nothing. Programs paid for with public money should stay online for a long time.

Information is to be structured, searchable and reusable rather than provided only as scanned documents. Free access is meant to keep it from depending on a person's ability to pay. The berlin.de portal is to be developed as a public information space. The Left wants to review rules that require content to be removed from media libraries, and favors permanent archiving and Creative Commons licenses without a restriction on commercial use. A media workshop is to let residents produce their own media.

The Left wants effective protection for people who report wrongdoing. In addition to protection under employment law, technically secure, encrypted and anonymous reporting channels are to be available.

Some people report mistakes and wrongdoing in agencies or companies. They are called whistleblowers. The Left wants to protect them better. They should not lose their jobs. They should be able to give tips safely and without their name.

According to the platform, whistleblowers help uncover structural problems. Digital reporting systems are to be encrypted throughout and allow anonymous communication. Who handles reports and who is responsible for protection is to be clearly defined.

The Left wants to make Berlin's government a more attractive employer, because many positions are vacant and staff leave for better-paying employers. Plans include the capital-city bonus (Hauptstadtzulage) for everyone, pay at the average of all states, permanent positions and flexible working hours.

Berlin's public offices are short of many workers. The Left wants to pay better for this work. Everyone should get the capital-city bonus. That is an extra payment on top of the salary. Jobs should no longer be temporary. There should be more working from home and flexible hours.

Besides converting temporary contracts to permanent ones, there are to be opportunities for promotion and a fixed budget for training. Flexible working-time models and as much remote work as possible are to become standard. The party wants to press the states' collective bargaining association (Tarifgemeinschaft deutscher Länder) to examine pilot projects for a four-day or 30-hour week without loss of pay. Responsibility for personnel and training is to be concentrated under one state secretary in the finance department. Planned staffing and organizational development is meant to end uncoordinated cutting and adding of positions.

The Left wants to use more in-house training to recruit and retain additional staff for Berlin's administration. A new "AusbildungsLAB" (training lab) would develop ideas for modern training, and trainees would be reliably hired after graduating and given affordable housing.

The Left wants to train more young people in city offices. This should give Berlin more staff. After training, they should get a steady job. They should also get cheap apartments.

Employees who train others would be relieved of some regular duties and paid more. The training lab would be set up as an open unit at the Senate Department for Finance and Personnel and work with civil society, business, and academia. Trainees and civil service candidates would be fully equipped with mobile devices and have a say in how things are done. The state-owned housing companies would provide additional apartments for them, with rents tied to trainee pay. The party also wants to push the construction of trainee dorms on state-owned land.

The Left wants to create a permanent structure that lets agencies act together immediately in crises and conflicts. The platform sees cooperation across agencies as the most important precondition for this.

The Left wants to prepare city offices for crises. The offices should then work together quickly. There should be set teams and rules for this. A law should secure it.

The structure would include trained staff, flexible rooms, communications equipment, and clearly assigned responsibilities, and would be anchored in law. The internal consulting unit at the administration academy would support this and build a resilience team. The existing task force structures would be reviewed.

The Left wants a participation law that sets firm minimum standards for how residents are involved in decisions. The party says participation must not be merely for show and should also cover transportation and other issues.

The Left wants a law on participation. It should set firm rules for how people in Berlin can have a say. This covers building, traffic, and other topics. People should also be able to watch borough meetings online.

First, the party wants to review how the existing guidelines have been applied at the state level and in the boroughs. The state advisory board on participation would meet publicly and be linked to the state parliament, and the boroughs would set up their own boards. The mein.berlin.de platform would be used more for feedback, prioritization, and real co-decision, with multilingual access as the norm. Decisions of the borough offices and the Council of Mayors would be viewable online. Public meetings of the borough assemblies and their committees would be streamed and documented.

The Left wants Berliners to be able to propose projects for public funds themselves and decide on them in participatory bodies. In addition to the participatory budgets in the boroughs, there would be one for the whole state.

The Left wants a participatory budget for all of Berlin. This means people propose projects themselves. And they help decide what the city spends money on. Some boroughs already do this.

The platform points to good experiences in Lichtenberg and Marzahn-Hellersdorf. Borough-level procedures, however, hit limits because many proposals fall under the state's responsibility. The party cites Paris as a model. It wants to discuss the process and the size of the budget with residents, and it also sees the federal special fund as a possible opportunity for participation.

The Left wants organizations working for democracy, participation and against discrimination and the far right to receive long-term rather than project-by-project funding. A Demokratiefördergesetz (democracy promotion act) is meant to secure this, because the program says these groups often work under insecure conditions.

Many groups work for democracy and against discrimination. They often get money only for a short time. The Left wants a law that gives them lasting funding. The groups should be able to work independently.

This covers NGOs, migrant self-organizations and projects against discrimination and the far right. Binding quality criteria are to apply to funding, especially regarding approaches critical of racism and antisemitism and intersectional approaches. Associations are also to be protected from repression and from what the party sees as narrowed spaces for debate. The Left further wants to strengthen participation of people with a migration background, create safer spaces and fund empowerment work.

The Left wants to protect the freedom of expression of public employees while keeping enemies of the constitution out. It considers screening all applicants through the domestic intelligence agency disproportionate. Instead it relies on civic education, trained HR staff, and faster disciplinary proceedings.

People who work for the state should be able to say what they think. Enemies of the constitution should not work for the state. The Left does not want the secret service to check all applicants. It wants more civic education and training.

Statements that are not criminal should have no consequences under employment or civil-service law. The platform calls for more training on fundamental and human rights and anti-discrimination law, including mandatory courses for current staff. HR managers would learn to recognize anti-constitutional codes and be allowed to view publicly accessible websites and social media profiles, at hiring and when there are concrete indications. Disciplinary proceedings are to be sped up with more staff, with staff councils involved. Those who pass on sensitive data or act against the constitution should be easier to dismiss, especially in the police; whistleblowers are to be better protected. The Left rejects the reduction of employee rights in federal disciplinary law made in 2024.

The Left wants to lower the hurdles for citizens' initiatives, scrap the approval quorum, and allow referendums on more subjects. In addition, Berlin is to get a permanent citizens' dialogue whose members are chosen by lot and whose recommendations the state parliament must take up.

The Left wants people in Berlin to have more say. A citizens' initiative should need fewer signatures. People should be allowed to vote on more subjects. There should also be a permanent citizens' dialogue. Its members are picked by lot.

In the future, votes should also be possible on the fees of public companies and on levies, and a referendum should be held before any public company is privatized. The party rejects referendums called by the government. A new veto referendum would allow a vote on laws already passed with only a small number of signatures, especially when those laws change earlier referendum results. A citizens' dialogue law is to set deadlines within which parliament must deal with the recommendations of the randomly selected body. A service office for participation is to be set up at the Senate, modeled on Baden-Württemberg. Signatures should also be collectable digitally in line with data protection rules, for example using the electronic ID function.

The Left wants everyone who lives in Berlin to be able to vote and is pushing for voting rights after five years of residence, even without German citizenship. In addition, the electoral thresholds in state and district elections are to be dropped and the signature requirements for nominations lowered.

The Left wants to change election law. People without a German passport should be allowed to vote too. They must have lived here for five years. The electoral threshold should go. That is a rule that keeps small parties from getting seats.

As long as the thresholds for the state parliament and the district assemblies remain, a backup vote is to be introduced so that fewer votes go uncounted. An instant-runoff system is to be examined for the election of constituency candidates. Voters should also be able to cast a valid "no vote" against all nominations. In each constituency, one polling place that is open the day before the election is to be promoted specifically to first-time voters. Homeless people and people without housing of their own should find it easier to exercise their right to vote.

The Left wants to set up a commission that develops proposals for reforming Berlin's state constitution. Citizens are to be actively involved in several stages.

The Left wants to update Berlin's constitution. The constitution is the state's most important law. A commission should make proposals for this. The people of Berlin should help with the work.

Among other things, the commission is to discuss election and referendum law, citizens' assemblies and participatory budgets, socialization of property, the position of the districts, and the protection of essential public services. Participation is to take place in person, online, and in mixed formats. Open-source software is to be used for this.

The Left wants to remove barriers to the justice system, especially for people with low incomes. This includes more advice services, understandable information, a more digital and more local justice system, and better protection for victims of crime and for attorney-client privilege.

The Left wants all people to get justice more easily. This matters most for people with little money. There should be more advice and information in plain language. Victims of crime should get more help. Courts should be close to where people live.

The platform lists in-person advice, information in plain language and foreign languages, stronger collective lawsuits by associations, and further digitalization of the justice system. Attorney-client privilege is to stay protected from state interference, including from any storage of IP addresses, and lawyers are to be paid appropriately for legal aid work and court-appointed defense. Victim protection services are to get more funding, and work with offenders is to become more visible, especially in juvenile justice. The Tiergarten local court is to have a judge on call at night again. A citywide review is to examine where court locations are missing, for example in Marzahn-Hellersdorf.

The Left wants to improve working conditions for all occupational groups in the justice system, explicitly including non-judicial staff, in order to attract new recruits. This includes more training, digital and more uniform IT, and modernized court buildings.

The Left wants better jobs in the justice system. This applies to all jobs there. That way more people should apply. Courts should get better computer systems. The buildings should be renovated.

Further training is to be expanded. The party wants to evaluate how the qualification requirement for family court judges has worked out and to examine whether it could be applied to other judicial roles. The platform treats up-to-date work tools as part of what makes the justice system an attractive employer. To that end, digitalization is to be advanced, IT standardized, and the state's court buildings modernized.

The Left wants to protect Berlin's state Constitutional Court from being taken over by anti-democratic forces. At the same time, a minority should not be able to block the election of constitutional judges. The party wants to work out with experts how this can be achieved.

Berlin has its own constitutional court. The Left wants to protect this court. Enemies of democracy should not be able to take it over. Also, nobody should be able to block the election of judges. Experts should look for solutions.

The platform points to the proposal by many experts to make it harder to change the court's setup, such as the number of judges, election quorums, or reelection. In Berlin these rules are largely already part of the constitution and therefore hard to change. According to the party, however, high hurdles can allow a minority to prevent the election of judges altogether. As one possible solution it mentions automatic referral to the Federal Constitutional Court.

In the long run, the Left aims for a self-governing judiciary with independent judicial councils that decide on staffing, budget, and organization. As a first step, the judicial selection committee is to be more closely involved in hiring judges. The party wants to restore separate budget chapters for the individual courts.

The Left wants the courts to run themselves. Independent councils should decide on staff and money. Today the ministry decides a lot. First, a committee should have more say in hiring judges. Each court should again get its own part of the budget.

In the platform's view, the current system gives justice ministries a great deal of control. Together with judges and their representative bodies, models are to be developed that better match Article 92 of the Basic Law. For a stronger role of the judicial selection committee, the party is examining constitutionally sound options that could also serve as a model for amending the Basic Law. It regards the merging of the budget chapters for local courts, regional courts, and the Kammergericht (Berlin's higher regional court) in the 2026/2027 budget as a concentration of power in the ministry. The decentralized structure is to return for the ordinary courts and prosecution authorities and remain in place for the rest of the justice system.

The Left wants to enshrine antifascism as a state goal in Berlin's constitution. It favors banning the AfD and wants Berlin to initiate a motion to that end in the Bundesrat. In the state parliament, any cooperation with the AfD is to be ruled out.

The Left wants to change Berlin's constitution. It should say: The state stands against fascism. The Left also wants a ban on the AfD party. Berlin should propose this in the Bundesrat, the chamber of the states. No parliamentary group should work with the AfD.

The platform cites Saxony-Anhalt as the model for the state goal. In the party's view, the spread of fascist, neo-Nazi, racist, antifeminist, antisemitic and anti-Muslim efforts contradicts the basic principles of democracy and fundamental rights. Preventing this is described as a duty of the state and of every individual. The Left wants all democratic parliamentary groups to agree not to cooperate with the AfD on parliamentary initiatives. It regards a Bundesrat initiative for ban proceedings as Berlin's constitutional obligation.

The Left wants a state strategy spanning all government departments to push back far-right structures in Berlin. Counseling centers, victim support and prevention programs are to receive more and more reliable funding. The platform points to a rising number of far-right incidents, including by young people.

The Left wants a plan against far-right groups in Berlin. All parts of the government should work together on it. Counseling centers and help for victims should get more money. There should be more prevention programs. Young people should find other options than violent groups.

The strategy is to be reviewed regularly, strengthen civil society and protect those affected. Legal tools are to be used consistently without restricting fundamental rights across the board. A standing exchange among authorities, such as an annual agency conference, is to be added. Counseling services, victim support, incident registers, independent archives and anonymous complaint offices are to be funded according to need and with little red tape. Prevention is to include exit counseling, digital formats against propaganda and community-based programs, addressing risk factors such as poverty or personal experience of violence. It is also meant to target antifeminism, everyday racism, antisemitism, conspiracy thinking and religious fundamentalism.

The Left wants to require staff in education, social services, the public sector, and private security, as well as members of staff and works councils, to take training on discrimination, racism, and far-right ideologies. It also plans a contact point for volunteers and public awareness campaigns.

The Left wants required training for many workers. The training is about racism and far-right ideas. Teachers and security staff are among those who must take it. There will also be campaigns for democracy.

To make the training possible, courses offered by associations, organizations, and public bodies are to be strengthened, and employees are to get a binding right to time off for them. Teacher training is also to cover how to deal with right-wing ideologies. A project called "Engagement gegen rechte Gewalt" (engagement against right-wing violence) at Berlin's state volunteer agency is to serve as an easy-to-reach central contact point offering further training to volunteers. The program calls for a safety and networking plan for associations and youth clubs that could be targets of right-wing violence. Campaigns on billboards and social media are to inform people about far-right ideologies, build media literacy, and encourage civic courage.

The Left wants to defend the tax-exempt nonprofit status of antifascist associations and to decriminalize peaceful antifascist civil disobedience. It rejects extraditing activists to other countries.

The Left wants to protect antifascist groups. They should keep their tax benefits. Peaceful protest against the far right should no longer be a crime. Activists should not be handed over to other countries.

The program names the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten (an association of victims of Nazi persecution) and Rote Hilfe as examples. It says these groups face tax-related attacks and the closing of their bank accounts, known as debanking. The Left demands proportionality and compliance with existing law in how activists are treated. It cites the case of Maja T. as an example of an extradition it opposes.

The Left wants to protect the public service from civil servants with far-right views but rejects new Berufsverbote (bans from public employment). In addition, known neo-Nazis are no longer to be given training slots in public sports facilities.

The Left wants to protect the state from far-right civil servants. But it does not want new job bans. Each case should be checked on its own. Known neo-Nazis should not be allowed to train in public gyms.

Existing legal options are to be fully used in Berlin, and additional tools are to be created. The party relies on prevention during hiring and training and on case-by-case reviews, especially in security agencies, the courts, and education. The program also refers to the debate about civil servants who are prominent AfD members. The state law on sports facilities is to be changed so that known neo-Nazis get no usage times. If martial arts clubs tolerate known and convicted neo-Nazis, their usage contracts with the state or districts are to be reviewed. The Left wants to strengthen initiatives that stand up for democracy and diversity in sports.

The Left calls for a committee of inquiry into links between the NSU and other right-wing terrorist structures and Berlin. The inquiry into the series of right-wing attacks in Neukölln and the study commission against antisemitism, racism, and anti-Muslim hostility are also to be continued.

The Left wants parliament to keep looking into far-right violence. A new committee should examine links between the terror group NSU and Berlin. The attacks in Neukölln should also be examined further. A commission against racism and antisemitism should start working again.

According to the program, the committee on the "Neukölln complex" found investigative errors, misconduct in the justice system, and ties between officials and the far-right scene, while only a few crimes were solved. That inquiry is therefore to continue in the next legislative term. The study commission set up in spring 2025 could not finish its work properly, the program says, citing racist remarks by individual CDU members and pressure on experts. When the work resumes, affected communities and civil society groups are to be more closely involved.