A new regulation of the submission deadline is necessary
When the corona pandemic began last year, it quickly became clear that the associated restrictions would also have consequences for democracy. At the instigation of Mehr Demokratie eV, the state parliament decided in May to suspend the three-month submission deadline for citizens’ petitions in 2020 and to set it uniformly on March 31, 2021.
The suspension of the deadline is now drawing to a close – but not the corona pandemic. That is why more democracy calls on the newly elected MPs to regulate the deadlines again in the interests of the citizens. Another temporary suspension of the deadline will ultimately only lead to a renewed need for improvement in a few months. We therefore propose a deadline rule like in Schleswig-Holstein. There the submission period does not begin with a municipal council resolution, but with the start of the collection of signatures.
The experiences of 2020 in Baden-Württemberg also speak in favor of such a permanently viable regulation. On the one hand, the number of petitions submitted fell by 50 percent despite the suspension of the deadline. On the other hand, five of the requests submitted were only possible thanks to the suspension of the deadline – without any planning or legal uncertainty for the municipalities.
You can find a detailed balance sheet of the 2020 citizens’ initiative as well as our proposed amendment here. You can read our press release here.
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