“Do you behave as the person you truly want to be?”
I ask myself this question in moments when I clearly fall short. Yes, it is hard to live up to one’s ideal self—I’m probably not the only one who feels this way.
The same applies for societies. Over the past ten years, I have learned a lot about German society. I admire it in many ways. I am convinced that the vast majority accepts a basic reality: Germany is no longer homogeneous—it is international, diverse, multicultural. There is a clear desire to be a modern, inclusive society.
Voting rights for non-German citizens have become a key point of contention in today’s Germany. A few weeks ago, we published a statistic showing that, within the EU, Germany is among the most restrictive countries when it comes to granting voting rights to third-country nationals. Why is that? Because it requires a change to the federal constitution, approved by a two-thirds majority in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. It requires political—and even more so, social—consensus.
In Berlin, 25% of residents are excluded from local elections. If you were elected mayor, would you feel legitimate when a quarter of the city could not even vote?
There are many great challenges—the economy, energy, war, climate—so why are voting rights so important? Because it is time to decide what kind of society we want to be: open-minded and innovative, a society that welcomes and attracts talent, entrepreneurs, people who want to create, work, and move things forward.
The German constitution states: “All state authority derives from the people” (Das Volk). According to the Federal Constitutional Court, this is the obstacle to voting rights reform—because “the people” means German citizens.
It is time to revisit who “the people” are. It is time to decide what kind of society Berlin and Germany want to be. Hesitating is also a decision.
