Germany's socialist interior minister demands voting rights for migrants at the municipal (municipal) level. SPD politician Nancy Faeser, who is the top candidate in the state of Hesse in the state elections in early October, would give all immigrants the right to vote if they have lived in Germany for more than six months.
German Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser would give the right to vote to foreigners living in Germany, the German newspaper Bild wrote on Tuesday based on the election program of the Hessen provincial organization of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
According to the report, the Hessen SPD, which is running in the October 8th state legislative (Landtag) election under the leadership of Nancy Faser, promises in its program that it will fight hard at the federal level and in the Bundesrat - the chamber of the federal legislature that brings together the state governments - to "vote everyone who has lived in a Hessen settlement for more than six months should be entitled to vote in local government elections".
In response to Bild's inquiry, the party's spokesperson said:
the promise refers to the right to vote in local government elections for people who have a permanent residence permit.
The newspaper added: in practice, it usually takes longer than six months for refugees to receive a residence permit. According to his interpretation, the campaign promise of the Social Democrats means that, in addition to German citizens and EU citizens, foreigners applying for asylum, such as citizens of Syria and Afghanistan, could also vote in municipal elections, and other groups of foreigners outside the EU, such as Turkish citizens, could also vote. would have this right.
Political scientist Stefan Luft, a researcher at the University of Bremen, told Bild about the election promise of the SPD's organization in Hessen that, in his opinion, "the right to vote should in principle be linked to citizenship", but EU citizens already have a "special status".
"Extending this special status to 'everyone' devalues naturalization and undermines the connection between successful integration, citizenship and the right to vote," opined Stefan Luft.
Stefan Heck, member of the federal parliament (Bundestag) of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), member of the board of the CDU organization in Hessen, and one of the party's interior affairs and electoral rights experts, told Bild that
"Faeser's proposal is a dangerous misstep".
Manfred Pentz, general secretary of the CDU organization in Hessen, added that "the right to vote is not a tool for election campaigns, but one of the most important democratic values" that "we must keep for the citizens of our state".
As he said, "arbitrarily expanding the right to vote and tying it only to a residence permit instead of citizenship is contrary to our democratic principles" and
the CDU therefore "unequivocally rejects" the aspiration of the Hessian Social Democrats.
MTI
Cover image: MTI/EPA/Armin Weigel
