Six parties, four policy areas, one ballot on September 20. An overview, not an endorsement.
First, the most important thing, as always: even without a German passport, you get a say on September 20, at the BVV, your district assembly.
Full details in our extra piece for EU citizens in Berlin. This piece covers the other half of the election, the Abgeordnetenhaus, and what six parties actually plan to do with it if they win.
We have said it before: control over sexuality, gender, art, and culture is the dress rehearsal for control over everything else. Here is the full-length version of that rehearsal, script included. Six parties, four topics, no ranking, no endorsement. Just who is planning what while you are not looking.
Queer Politics and Equality. Where Berlin's Parties Split.
Here the differences between parties are rarely subtle. The Greens and the Left have been the driving forces for years, funding queer spaces, expanding the state anti-discrimination law, and building concepts against homelessness in the community. The SPD is the reliable, more cautious partner, focused on support centers for queer youth. The CDU holds back on new initiatives. The AfD wants, according to its own official position, to reverse marriage equality and scrap the self-determination law. They fight against the "woke culture". Not a footnote. Party line.
The new party Volt takes a different approach: less grand legislative gesture, more concrete infrastructure. The party wants to consistently continue and expand Berlin's state strategy for queer safety, with regional support centers specifically for victims of anti-queer violence. It wants to fund queer cultural and community spaces and strengthen queer presence in public space, through memorial sites and funded Pride events in all twelve districts, including alcohol-free formats.
Housing in Berlin. Rent Caps, Expropriation, or Market.
Housing is not about taste, it is about worldview. The Left wants to socialize major housing corporations like Deutsche Wohnen & Co., siding clearly with the 85 percent of Berliners who rent. With their “Affordable Rents Act”, the Greens aim to ensure a higher proportion of affordable housing and to systematically exclude landlords who do not comply with the rules from the market. They want to convert the two million square metres of vacant office space in Berlin into housing and put a stop to planning permission for new office towers. The SPD promises housing policy against rising rents and profit-seeking. The CDU emphasizes growth and homeownership incentives, which weighs property rights over tenant rights. Also the AfD wants to boost homeownership, with a difference: they focus their support programs on native Germans.
Volt offers a mix of Greens and CDU, but openly contradicts the Left here: the party rejects rigid rent caps and blanket expropriation, arguing they shrink supply. Instead: a more narrowly targeted rent brake, a digital rent-index database against speculation, a surcharge for tenants who have outgrown income limits in subsidized housing, and a social rental agency that leases apartments from the open market and passes them on with a one-hundred-percent state rent guarantee.
Transport in Berlin. Cars, Bikes, or Congestion Charge.
On transport, consensus disappears completely. The Greens want a city without "car fixation" and want to ensure that no one dies on the roads anymore. They also stand for more bike infrastructure, free transit outside rush hour, no further expansion of the A100 highway. The CDU sticks with expanding the A100 and wants more parking, less bicycle lanes, less "Fahrradstrassen". The Left backs cycling initiatives, cheaper public transport, and a nighttime flight ban at BER airport.
Volt sidesteps the whole car yes-or-no debate entirely and goes for pricing: a congestion charge inside the S-Bahn ring, tiered by time of day and emissions class, digital parking priced by vehicle size, with revenue flowing into transit and bike lanes. Plus long-term funding for the Deutschlandticket, expansion of the Jelbi mobility platform, and digital on-demand shuttles for the outer districts.
Berlin Schools. Gymnasium, Comprehensive, or Permeable.
The CDU wants to keep the Gymnasium system and scrap the lottery system for school placement in favor of grade averages, merit over chance. The Left counters: a hundred new comprehensive schools as also the Greens want to double them, a better staffing ratio, and a longer shared elementary school period. The AfD joins the CDU on bringing back civil-servant status for teachers, but on diversity and sex education in curricula takes the same harsh opposing stance as at the federal level, criticizing what it calls "gender ideology."
Volt picks door number three: not abolishing the two-track system, but making it more permeable, with easier transfers between school types. Plus multi-professional teams in every school, and expansion of the Europaschulen.
Why Volt Keeps Showing Up
The reason why we focus on Volt in this article: it is Berlin's new kid on the block. With 4.8 percent of votes in the last EU elections, Volt will probably enter Berlin's parliament this year. And, other than all other five parties in this piece, Volt has a few new ideas that are worth explaining.
Again, this is not an endorsement. But you should know what the menu offers. Volt is the only party planning to reform voting rights so that EU citizens in Berlin can vote in all elections, not just the BVV. That changes nothing about this particular election, for now. But it explains why this party keeps showing up in our piece for EU citizens living in Berlin.
All positions listed here come from each party's most current available program.