Giffey opposes voting rights without German citizenship – and demands SPD member vote
Berlin's economy senator rejects the planned state voting right after five years of residence. She wants all SPD members to vote on any coalition deal with the Left and the Greens.
Archive image · Photo: Leonhard Lenz / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (cropped and resized)
Berlin economy senator and former SPD state leader Franziska Giffey has come out against a key point of the red-green-red exploratory paper. The Left, the Greens and the SPD want to give everyone who has lived in Germany for at least five years the right to vote and stand in Berlin state and local elections. According to dts, this could affect up to 600,000 additional voters. “The right to vote at state level has so far rightly been reserved for people with German citizenship,” Giffey told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
An unconditional voting right after five years would contradict the constitutive principles of the country, Giffey argued. Voters should speak German and commit to the free democratic basic order. As district mayor of Neukölln she naturalised around 3,000 people, she said, but the proposal went too far. She also warned that extremes on the left and right could grow stronger: “The shocking images from France should serve as a warning.”
Giffey also wants the party base to decide: “That is why I am clearly calling for a vote of all Berlin SPD members on the coalition agreement.” Forming the government was “a decision on the SPD's direction”, she said. With a budget that requires savings, the cost of the promises made in the talks must also be put on the table. The SPD won 12.1 percent in the Berlin state election on 20 September, its worst result.