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The Stability Council is forcing Bremen to make savings. It now wants to cut staff, increase fees and get rid of a few young refugees.

Bremen taz First Corona, then the war in Ukraine – the crises of the past few years had long given cash-strapped Bremen more room to maneuver. The two-city state made use of the exemption provided by the debt brake for emergency situations and took out billions in loans.

That is now over. The Stability Council has Bremen’s Stability is being called into question. Currently, around one in nine euros of Bremen’s budget goes into interest payments on old debts. In order to receive the 400 million euros in restructuring aid from the federal government next year, Bremen must now start saving and repaying old loans. 2025 will be the first year since 2019 in which no state of emergency is declared – and thus the first year since the red-green-red coalition was formed in which Bremen has to make do with what it earns.

Around 100 million euros a year must be saved between 2025 and 2027 – but where will the money come from? On Friday, the coalition partners agreed on initial plans.

The Senate Press Office has named the redistribution of underage refugees as the first so-called “structural measure” to save money. Bremen has so far taken in about twice as many unaccompanied minors as is provided for under the Königsstein key. This is where savings are to be made: the aim is to rely on “increased efforts by the state” and “consistent procedures” in order to distribute the young people to other states in the future.

Refugee Council criticizes

The Refugee Council has sharply criticized this. After all, the current practice does not take into account the special need for protection and family ties in many cases. “Bremen is already violating human and children’s rights,” says spokeswoman Gundula Oerter. “And they want to make this even worse? Seriously?”

The social affairs department was unable to quantify how much money could be saved through redistribution on Monday; this makes the point different from many other more concrete savings ideas. For Oerter, there is much to suggest that the point is also about symbolism. “Bremen is thus actively participating in the shift in discourse to the right.”

The savings plans will have a less existential, but still noticeable, impact on many others: It is already clear that parents of small children will be burdened more heavily, in two areas: crèche fees will rise – and the cost of lunch in the daycare center will also be increased by ten euros per month (an additional 2.8 million euros annually).

Savings concept with unknowns

For students, the administration fee will rise to 63 euros, which is expected to bring in 800,000 euros. Social ticket recipients will have to pay more money for bus and train travel. And drivers will also feel the effects of the austerity budget: more speed cameras will be installed (an additional 600,000 euros in revenue) – and parking fees will also rise.

Overall, a large part of the efforts are devoted to increasing revenue: the aim is to generate an additional million euros annually from tourists through a higher city tax. A packaging tax based on the Tübingen model is at least being discussed. And five to ten million euros are to be raised annually through an increase in the property transfer tax. The casino also has to shell out more money – this should bring in one million euros annually.

Not all of the program’s points are that specific: the savings plan still contains a lot of unknowns. Basically, Bremen has decided to lower its standards where they were previously higher than in other cities.

This is becoming more concrete when it comes to climate protection: the EH55 building standard will soon apply to new public buildings in Bremen, as it does everywhere else. With the currently applicable EH40, a house only uses 40 percent of the energy of a comparable building. This ambitious standard was only set in 2023 – as a result of the goals of the Enquete Commission on Climate Protection, whose goal of climate neutrality in the building sector by 2035 could now be made more difficult.

Social standards are also to be lowered to the level of other places. In the future, the costs per case should no longer be above the average of other large cities. However, the social affairs department cannot yet say where this will be felt specifically and how much money it will save.

It is already clear that parents of small children will be burdened more in two areas: crèche fees will rise – and the cost of lunch in the daycare center will also be increased by ten euros per month

A sticking point for the evaluation of the program: “The most difficult thing for us is the announcement, which has not yet been specifically formulated, that standards in the social sector will be lowered,” says Nelsson Janßen of the Left Party. The process will be “monitored closely” to ensure that standards are not lowered below the national average.

An important step towards long-term savings – and more or less undisputed – is the creation of a personnel concept. This is intended to keep Bremen’s core administration in check in particular: the number of staff there has increased significantly over the past ten years. In the last legislative period, the finance department had already planned to set up a central office for personnel requirements planning – but this failed at the time due to resistance from several departments who did not want anyone to interfere in their affairs.

In the core administration area, the number of employees rose from 1,788 in 2014 to 2,551 in 2023; in 2024, the administration in Bremen would have to pay around 1,450,000 euros per 1,000 inhabitants. This corresponds to around 120 euros per month per inhabitant, just for the staff in Bremen’s core administration. The problem with personnel costs: they increase every year due to wage adjustments alone, and reduce the scope for making free decisions in the budget for projects or plans.

Departments to cut staff

From 2025, the departments are to cut staff by 1.45 percent annually; the police, justice, schools, daycare centers and tax administration are exempt from the cuts.

The savings program has so far included concrete figures for savings of around 150 million euros over the next three years; this is not enough, 100 million euros are needed annually.

The CDU is therefore already predicting that the other federal states will not accept the program as a restructuring program. This does not seem to be entirely unfounded. Finance Senator Björn Fecker (Greens) also says that, depending on how the framework conditions develop, “further painful decisions will be necessary” in order to achieve the goal of the restructuring process.