Linke on democracy and the state

The Left wants to lower the voting age to 16 and create youth bodies with voting rights in municipalities. Children's rights would be written into the Basic Law. The platform argues that young people must be involved in decisions about their future.

The Left wants people to vote from age 16. Towns and cities would have youth parliaments. Children's rights would be in the constitution. Leisure activities for children would be free.

Youth councils or youth parliaments would vote on all matters affecting young people. Children and young people would get a legal right to development, participation and protection from violence. Youth centers, music schools, libraries, swimming pools and sports clubs would be free, accessible and close to home, funded by municipalities, states and more money from the federal children and youth plan. Child and youth welfare services would be strengthened.

The Left wants a guarantee of basic services in every locality: bus service, a bakery, access to cash, a doctor's office and meeting places. The platform argues that the market does not provide this, so privatization and cuts should end.

The Left wants a guarantee for every town. Every place should have a bus, a bakery, a doctor and places to meet. People should be able to get cash everywhere. Towns should get enough money for this.

The platform also counts swimming pools, sports facilities, youth centers, help for homeless people and school psychologists as essential public services. Municipalities in financial trouble would get emergency money from a federal fund for a minimum level of social infrastructure. Every municipality would get a social center offering banking, postal services and internet access. Every village would get a bus or rail connection, at least hourly, with on-demand service at night. Medical care through doctors' offices, outpatient clinics and hospitals is to be secured everywhere.

The Left wants to introduce federal referendums and popular vetoes, lower the voting age to 16 everywhere, and let people without a German passport vote after five years of residence. The right to demonstrate should not be curtailed.

The Left wants popular votes for all of Germany. People should be allowed to vote at 16. People without a German passport should also be allowed to vote. They must have lived here for five years.

At the federal level, popular initiatives, petitions and referendums would become possible, as would referendums serving as a veto against decisions of parliament. Citizens' assemblies chosen by lot would be promoted. A voting age of 16 would apply to European, federal, state and local elections. The party supports protests for climate protection or peace, for example, even when they use civil disobedience.

The Left wants to ban corporate donations to parties and party sponsorship and cap private donations at 25,000 euros a year. More transparency is meant to make lobbyists' influence on laws and lawmakers visible.

Companies should no longer give money to parties. One person may give at most 25,000 euros a year. Lawmakers should not accept donations. People should see who helped write laws.

Every government bill would list which interest representatives and experts were involved (a legislative footprint). Lawmakers would disclose outside income and shareholdings; after-the-fact thank-you donations would be punishable as bribery. Ministers and parliamentary state secretaries would wait at least three years before moving to companies from their former area of responsibility. There would be no lobbying in schools, and research paid for by lobbyists would have to be labeled.

The Left wants an institutional separation of state and religion and an end to preferential treatment of Christian churches. Churches would collect their own tax, state payments to them would be ended by settlement, and the churches' special labor law abolished.

The Left wants to separate church and state more. Churches should collect their money themselves. The state should treat all religions the same. Two new holidays should come: Eid al-Fitr and Yom Kippur.

State payments are regular transfers from the states to the churches, which the constitution has called for ending since 1919. All religious and philosophical communities should be able to become public-law corporations on equal terms. The party opposes bans on religious clothing and wants shared ethics classes and military chaplaincy by all communities. It calls for a commissioner for Muslim life and a work-free Sunday.

The Left wants to ban militant neo-Nazi organizations and have the Federal Constitutional Court examine a ban of the AfD. Initiatives against right-wing extremism would get permanent funding through a democracy promotion law.

The Left wants to ban armed neo-Nazi groups. The highest court should examine a ban of the AfD. Groups against right-wing extremism should get lasting funding. May 8 should become a public holiday.

Funding would go to mobile counseling, victim counseling, democracy alliances, migrant self-organizations and antifa initiatives; protest against the right should not be criminalized. Intelligence files on the Oktoberfest bombing and the NSU, among others, would be released. Article 139 of the Basic Law would get an antifascist clause. Memorial sites would receive more and permanent federal money, and long-overlooked groups of Nazi victims would be recognized.