From BZ/dpa
According to a survey, the confidence of German citizens in democracy is rapidly declining.
While in autumn 2021 just under a third of those surveyed said they had less or less trust in German democracy, this summer more than half of Germans (54 percent) agreed with the statement, as from a Thursday in Hamburg published survey commissioned by the Körber Foundation.
Even more dramatic is the loss of public confidence in the parties. In 2020, 29 percent of Germans said they trusted parties, but by 2021 the figure had already fallen to 20 percent and has now reached a low of 9 percent.
In June and July, 1,113 adults took part in the representative survey conducted by policy matters on behalf of the Körber Foundation. Around 90 percent of them stated that a life in freedom, equality before the law and the right to freedom of expression and free and secret elections were important to them.
At the same time, 71 percent said that political and media leaders live in their own world, from which they look down on the rest of the population. Almost half of Germans (46 percent) think that things are less or not at all fair in the country.
According to the information, 86 percent of Germans would like to be more involved in important decisions. This relates primarily to the municipal level (93 percent) and the state level (91 percent). But the Germans also considered greater participation to be important at the federal level (85 percent).
At the same time, however, more than half of those surveyed (56 percent) answered the question in the affirmative as to whether politicians were needed to solve the problems “who have more power and the will to assert themselves in order to be able to make quick and thorough decisions”.
For the head of the Democracy, Commitment, Cohesion department at the Körber Foundation, Sven Tetzlaff, the results mean that Germans’ trust in democracy and its institutions is on a downhill path. “Together with people’s economic concerns, this is a worrying development.”
Half of those questioned doubt that the country is prepared for the transformation tasks. “This significantly slows down people’s willingness to change to cope with the major challenges.”