Commentary: Giving foreign nationals the vote in Berlin would cross a dangerous line

OPINION & ANALYSIS | 20 October 2026 · Commentary

A joint exploratory paper by the Left Party, Greens and SPD says the parties will advocate active and passive voting rights at local and state level for everyone after five years of residence in Germany. For now, this is a political demand; it does not change current election law. [1][2]

A dangerous break with a core principle

Voting is at the heart of democratic participation. Only German citizens may currently vote in state elections; local elections have a limited exception for citizens of other EU countries. The Berlin proposal would break the link between citizenship and voting rights at local and state level, replacing it with five years of residence in Germany. The paper does not explain how the period would be counted or which residence statuses would qualify. [2][3][4][5]

Giving foreign nationals full voting and candidacy rights without naturalisation is an affront. Anyone who helps determine a state’s political direction or stands for its parliament should have acquired citizenship and met the legal conditions attached to it. Long residence alone is not enough.

Citizenship comes with requirements

German citizenship is not granted automatically after five years of residence. The law requires, among other things, verified identity, a commitment to Germany’s free democratic order, a declaration concerning anti-constitutional activity, adequate German language skills and knowledge of the country’s legal and social order. It also sets rules for criminal convictions and excludes naturalisation where specific evidence of certain anti-constitutional activity exists. Some minor convictions are disregarded, however, and there is no blanket ideological test. [7][8][9]

Voting rights based only on length of residence would not make these naturalisation requirements a condition of voting. The rules would not disappear from the law as a whole, but citizenship would no longer be the necessary route to these voting rights. That distinction matters.

Political calculation and radical forces

BILD frames the proposal as an effort by the Left Party to build political power with additional voters. That interpretation is plausible: parties seeking to expand the electorate create an opportunity to reach new groups and compete for their votes. The exploratory paper does not prove that a partisan motive was explicitly agreed; this remains a political assessment. [1][2]

The new electorate would not be uniform. It would be wrong to describe foreign nationals or Muslims as radical across the board. At the same time, a residence-based voting rule would include people with extremist, anti-democratic or Islamist views if they met its formal conditions. The paper does not prove an intention to target Islamist voters in particular. Still, the concern that radical forces could use this opening to gain voters and political influence should not be dismissed.

A highly contested constitutional question

Foreign nationals cannot currently vote in state elections. EU citizens are an exception in local elections. Berlin’s Interior Department told BILD that introducing state-level voting rights would require changes to both the Basic Law and Berlin’s constitution. An amendment to the Basic Law requires two-thirds majorities in the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Two constitutional law professors quoted by BILD consider the proposal incompatible with current constitutional law. Those are legal opinions, not a court ruling on a specific bill. [1][3][4][5][6]

The proposal has not been adopted, and it should not be. Making residence alone, rather than citizenship, the basis for voting would cross a dangerous line. Berlin needs solutions to its housing, administration and public-safety problems. This reform would solve none of them and could deepen political polarisation.