Di Fabio: Voting rights for foreigners at state level would be unconstitutional
The former constitutional judge challenges a key point of the red-green-red exploratory talks in Berlin. Only Germans may vote at state level, he says.
Archive image · Photo: Heike Huslage-Koch / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Former Federal Constitutional Court judge Udo Di Fabio considers voting rights for foreign nationals at state level unconstitutional. Such a right could be introduced at municipal level, but not for state parliaments or the Bundestag, he told the broadcaster Welt on Thursday. At state and federal level, “the German people” or the “sub-peoples” of the states vote, he said. Only Germans may vote there, “that is, those who have a German passport.”
Di Fabio was responding to the exploratory paper agreed by the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party in Berlin. It proposes giving foreigners who have lived in Germany for five years the right to vote and stand for election at municipal and state level. Berlin's SPD and Greens have already backed coalition negotiations; the Left Party is due to decide at the end of October, according to ZDFheute. CSU leader Markus Söder urged the SPD and Greens to clearly distance themselves from the Left Party, according to ZDFheute.