Linke on the economy

The Left wants to allow no further privatization and to gradually remunicipalize or socialize areas such as housing, public transit, care work, and health. Hospitals are to remain municipal. The party rejects cuts to social spending.

The Left wants to stop selling public companies. Important services should belong to the city again. These include housing, public transit, and health. Hospitals should stay with the city. The Left does not want to cut social services.

The program announces a halt to privatization and wants to return areas of everyday life to public ownership step by step. Hospitals should stay municipal and be remunicipalized when private operators pull out. Prices for rent, the subway, museums, or swimming pools should stay affordable. The Left says it will not vote for social cuts or for laws that make workers' lives more expensive or worse. It will not join a government that privatizes public services, cuts social benefits, or weakens the public sector.

The Left wants to protect small shops and neighborhood facilities and proposes that no new shopping malls be approved. In its view there are already too many, and they push out small businesses. The construction of more hotels is also to be steered through a dedicated plan.

The Left wants to protect small shops in the neighborhoods. No new big shopping malls should be allowed. The party says there are already too many. They push out the small shops. There should also be a plan with rules for new hotels.

According to the program, small shops, bookstores, daycare centers, and parent-run childcare groups secure local supply and many jobs. The urban development plan for centers is to be redrawn so that centers are understood as places of basic public services rather than places of heavy retail activity. A lodging development plan modeled on Barcelona and Heidelberg is meant to keep more underused hotels from taking up land.

The Left wants to align Berlin's business subsidies with strategic goals and tie them strictly to conditions such as collective bargaining coverage, ecological sustainability, and employment. Smaller companies, start-ups, migrant-run businesses, and women in business are to receive targeted support.

Berlin gives companies subsidy money. The Left wants strict conditions for it. Companies should pay union-agreed wages and work in a green way. Small companies should get subsidies more easily. Founders and businesses run by immigrants should also get help.

Collective bargaining coverage, ecological sustainability, and the creation and protection of jobs are to carry more weight in subsidy terms. A report is to disclose which company sizes and sectors benefited from the funding. Smaller companies are to be informed directly and be able to access funds more easily. The coaching bonus for founders is to return, and access to start-up loans is to be supported. Support for migrant-run businesses and for women in the skilled trades, as founders, and in leadership positions is to resume. The Left also wants to develop the joint innovation strategy with Brandenburg further.

The Left wants to make public procurement simpler and more digital so that smaller companies also get a chance. Approved-supplier lists and certificates are to replace repeated paperwork. At the same time, collective agreements, public-benefit orientation, open source, and human rights and environmental standards are to count in purchasing.

The state awards contracts to companies. The Left wants to make this easier. Companies with union pay agreements go on a list. Then they do not have to fill out every form each time. Small Berlin companies should get help. Human rights and the environment should count when the state buys things.

Companies that are bound by collective agreements and meet other procurement criteria would be placed on approved lists and would no longer need to submit individual proof with each bid. Together with the chambers of commerce and trades, a support service is to help smaller Berlin businesses obtain the certificates. Procurement is to serve local economic development more strongly. Companies in the public-benefit economy and those working with open source are to receive special consideration. The Left wants to secure human rights and environmental standards in supply chains and procurement rules and to pay more attention to global justice.

The Left wants to create new state-owned and cooperative Gewerbehöfe (shared commercial buildings) to offer small businesses affordable space. The state-owned company WISTA is to receive more capital for this, and Berlin's land fund is to be able to buy more property.

Small businesses can hardly find affordable space in Berlin. The Left wants to build new shared commercial buildings. These are buildings with rooms for many businesses. The state of Berlin should own such buildings itself. Berlin should also buy more land.

WISTA, as a site developer, is to receive additional capital to build more commercial buildings following the pilot project in Lichtenberg. Cooperative models are also to be supported together with the Chamber of Skilled Crafts. Women founders, the skilled trades, migrant-run businesses, and public-benefit enterprises are to be supported longer and more strongly with low-cost space. Berliner Bodenfonds GmbH is to be strengthened and its purchase fund increased in order to build up land reserves. Purchased sites can be made available through long-term ground leases to businesses facing displacement or for strategic business locations.

The Left wants to use the Bundesrat to achieve a permanent legal cap on commercial rents, including a multi-year rent freeze. A ban on vacancy is also to apply to commercial properties. The platform justifies this with the displacement of small shops and social facilities.

Rents for shops and businesses are rising fast in Berlin. Many small shops and daycare centers have to close because of this. The Left wants a law against high commercial rents. Rents should not be allowed to rise for several years. Commercial space must not stand empty.

According to the platform, commercial rents in Berlin have risen by an average of 9 percent a year since 2012, and there is no protective commercial tenancy law. It says restaurants, retail, daycare centers, and neighborhood social and cultural facilities are hit hardest. The Left wants to propose a permanent rent cap and a multi-year moratorium in the Bundesrat. A vacancy ban for commercial properties is meant to stop speculation.

The Left wants to have the state examine whether it can take over vacant department stores and shopping centers and turn them into neighborhood hubs with affordable shops. Small retailers are to get help with online business, and tradespeople are to get better parking and delivery access.

Many department stores and shops stand empty. The Left wants to check whether Berlin can take over such buildings. Low-cost shops, libraries, and daycare centers should go there. Small shops should get help selling online. Tradespeople and care services should be able to park more easily.

Commercial properties taken over would be developed for the public benefit and combined with social infrastructure, culture, and public facilities. Brick-and-mortar retailers are to receive help with digitization and fair access to online retail through independent platforms. Local logistics hubs and pickup services are to be funded to reduce delivery traffic in neighborhoods. In the Bundesrat, the Left wants to act against subsidized parcel delivery by large retailers such as Amazon, following a French model. Trades businesses and care services are to be allowed to use delivery zones and get special parking options.

The Left wants to raise industry's share of Berlin's economic output and make the region a pioneer of carbon-neutral production. A state-owned industrial holding company is to take stakes in important companies in crisis. Existing networks and the Masterplan Industriestadt (industrial city master plan) are to continue with better funding.

The Left wants to strengthen industry in Berlin. Factories should produce in a climate-friendly way. The state of Berlin should set up its own holding company. It buys shares in important companies in trouble. That way, jobs should stay in Berlin. Universities and companies should work together more closely.

The holding company is to support industrially significant companies through state stakes and use its influence to advance the social and ecological transition. The ReTra network for the Berlin-Brandenburg vehicle and supplier industry is to continue beyond 2026, and the Left wants to reverse cuts to the industrial master plan. Small and medium-sized companies are to get help applying for the industrial electricity price and a fund for carbon-reducing investments. Universities, industry, and IT service providers are to cooperate in innovation networks, for example on storage and battery technology including recycling. At the European level, the platform calls for a well-funded response to the US subsidy program IRA.

The Left wants more local production and wants outsourced manufacturing brought back. Public contracts and investment subsidies should, as far as possible, be tied to commitments to keep sites open, to transformation plans, and to training agreements.

The Left wants more goods to be made in the region. Companies should bring production back from abroad. Anyone who gets contracts or money from the state should make promises. For example: the plant stays in Berlin and the jobs stay safe.

The platform justifies the demand with shortages of medicines and production stoppages caused by disrupted global supply chains. Local content rules require that part of the value creation takes place locally. As evidence that public contracts alone do not secure jobs, the platform cites the dispute over the Stadler rail car plant in Pankow. Procurement should therefore also take job security and site commitments into account, and transformation plans should be drawn up together with works councils. The Left also wants to find ways to counter owners who withhold investment and to build new industries that actually manufacture in the region.

The Left wants to make tourism more compatible with city life and spread visitors more evenly across Berlin. Messe Berlin, the trade fair company, should remain publicly owned, keep its own fair formats, and develop new ones.

Many tourists come to Berlin. That brings money, but also noise and problems in neighborhoods. The Left wants to spread visitors better across the city. The trade fair should still belong to the state of Berlin. The Left does not want to sell it.

As downsides of the tourism boom, the platform lists tour buses, party noise, the displacement of local businesses in neighborhoods, and the loss of housing through providers such as Airbnb. A hotel development plan is to be drawn up together with the boroughs. The Left rejects plans to privatize the trade fair. Pointing to the IFA, it says the trade fair company should not leave exhibitions to outside organizers and merely rent out halls. Capacity for mid-sized conventions with a few thousand participants should be expanded.

The Left rejects additional arms production and arms research in Berlin and wants to convert existing arms manufacturers to civilian production. In the platform's view, rearmament increases the risk of war and offers no sustainable economic prospects.

The Left wants no new weapons factories in Berlin. Civilian plants should not start making weapons. Existing arms makers should switch to civilian products. This should keep the jobs safe for the long term. The Left says: more weapons make war more likely.

The civil clauses at universities should stay in place; such clauses rule out research for military purposes. In addition, the Left wants to introduce civil clauses in economic development funding. The platform argues that arms production undoes efforts toward a sustainable transformation of industry, because companies go for short-term profits instead of investing in the future. The conversion of arms plants is to be coordinated with works councils and unions.

The Left wants to strengthen alternative forms of business such as cooperatives, collectively run firms, and social enterprises. Permanent contact points, more advisory services, a state strategy, and stronger alternative economic research at universities are meant to contribute to this.

Some businesses belong to the people who work there. Others mainly want to benefit society. The Left wants to support such businesses. There should be permanent contact points and more advice. Research on other ways of doing business should also grow.

Contact points and networks for social and solidarity-based business models are to be secured permanently. Public money and contracts should be tied to social and environmental criteria so that enterprises oriented toward the common good have better chances. The platform proposes a state strategy and a dedicated economic cluster for the social economy. Academic research on alternative economics is to be linked with a research and advisory office. The Left criticizes the dominance of neoclassical economics and favors additional professorships with a different focus.

The Left wants to keep the rule that public contracts go only to companies paying collectively agreed wages, and it opposes raising the contract-value thresholds, which it says would hollow out that rule. At the same time, the procurement process is to become simpler and digital, and compliance is to be checked more closely.

Berlin gives many contracts to companies. These companies must pay union-scale wages. The Left wants to keep this rule. The process should become simpler and digital. There should also be more checks.

Companies bound by collective agreements would face less paperwork to prove compliance, for example through prequalification and the construction industry's social fund procedure. A wage and price adjustment clause would allow pay raises to be passed on in multi-year contracts. Tenders would set binding staffing levels and quality criteria, and subcontracting chains for the same piece of work would be capped at two links. Enforcement would include on-site inspections, involvement of the construction fund's inspection service SoKa Bau, a complaints office for workers, and tamper-proof electronic time tracking. The number of contracting offices would be reduced, and districts would share data on companies. Public buildings would be cleaned during the day and in continuous shifts for a fixed share of the work.