The parliamentary groups in the House of Representatives are working on a legal solution so that the result of the district elections on February 12 is also reflected in the filling of the district offices. This was confirmed by several factions in the daily mirror. The “Berliner Morgenpost” reported first.
The parliamentary directors of the coalition agreed on Wednesday to work out a timely political solution. The CDU had previously submitted an application for a possible solution to Parliament.
The left-right politician Sebastian Schlüsselburg, who is also responsible for electoral law issues in his parliamentary group, told the Tagesspiegel: “Of course we have to find a solution that corresponds to the will of the voters. Because it is a constitutionally tricky question, thoroughness takes precedence over speed.
The coalition is therefore annoyed with the Berlin constitutional judges: they had largely neglected to define the legal consequences of their verdict on the complete re-election. There is only one sentence in the grounds of the judgment on repeating the elections in the districts. A decision by the judges on how to deal with the problem would have corresponded to the status of a law and saved the Berlin state politicians some difficulties.
“It is up to the legislature to create legal regulations”
District mayors and councilors are elected by a simple majority of district councils and are then appointed temporary civil servants. As so-called election officials, they are part of the Berlin administration and can only be voted out with a two-thirds majority. The re-election doesn’t change that, like a Opinion of the Scientific Parliamentary Service reconfirmed in the House of Representatives.
The report states: A deselection by a two-thirds majority is also necessary “if the political majority in the district assembly has changed as a result of the repeat election”. If there is a need for change, “it is up to the legislator to create appropriate legal regulations”.
The parliamentary groups do not yet want to comment on what these regulations should look like in the end. A few weeks before the election, the CDU parliamentary group presented a draft law based on the regulations for a new BVV election.
In this case, district mayors and councilors who no longer have a majority would be relieved of their duties to make room for a new appointment. Exempted members of the district office remain civil servants, retain their pension rights and receive 71.5 percent of their earnings until the end of their five-year term.
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