By Peter Tiede
This warning call is intended to shake up the politicians in the government district and the state parliaments!
For Gerd Landsberg (70), head of the Association of Towns and Municipalities, one thing is certain: a “reorientation” of the state is “essential”. Because, as Landsberg warns: “Germany is in a recession, tax revenues are falling dramatically. The municipalities have a deficit of minus 6.8 billion euros in the first half of 2023.” In the first half of 2022, on the other hand, the municipalities “had a financing surplus of plus 5.8 billion euros due to high transfers”.
Landsberg: “Politics at the federal and state levels must react to this.”
Plain text from the city boss
Landsberg criticizes “always new, more performance promises” particularly sharply, giving tough examples:
► basic child security
► the “four-day week for everyone”
► the “unfulfillable legal entitlement to all-day care”
► “Full insurance in care – regardless of the income of the person concerned”
► “a migration policy without the clear aim of limitation”.
All of this must “be ended”, demands Landsberg. Because: “Successful politics begins with the presentation of honest circumstances.” Much of what is desirable is “neither financially nor humanely feasible,” he makes clear.
Landsberg: “Germany must finally find its way back to reality (…). This is the only way we will be able to effectively limit extremist tendencies.” Landsberg makes it clear that he fears for democracy.
Local democracy is “at risk if the local authorities become less and less able to do anything locally”. The majority of people “unfortunately have the feeling that those up there no longer perceive what actually occupies them locally”.
He is certain: “We urgently need to change that. We will only be successful if the parties stop outdoing each other, which the state can distribute in further benefits.”
His bitter conclusion: Germany is no longer the land of poets and thinkers.
Instead, “a solution is propagated for all problems: more staff, more money, more appreciation” says Landsberg – “although we all have long known that it doesn’t work”.
How people would see the state is decided “not in Berlin and not in the state capitals” but “always locally in the cities and communities”.
Landsberg demands: “That’s why we now need a dialogue platform between the federal, state and local governments: What can we do, what do we want, what can we realistically do?”