Die Bürgerschaftswahl in Bremen vom 14. Mai 2023: SPD wieder stärkste Partei, Rot-Grün-Rot wird fortgesetzt

Abstract

After a rather boring election campaign the Social-Democrats (SPD) managed to achieve the position of the strongest party again which they lost to the Christian-Democrats (CDU) in 2019 . The CDU and the Left Party defended more or less their last election results whereas the Greens came up with a loss of more than five per cent of the votes . Apparently, the performance of the Greens in the three-party-coalition with the SPD and the Left Party obtained only low credit by the voters . With 5,1 per cent the Liberals were very close to enter the parliament . The SPD as the strongest party invited the Greens and the Left Party as well as the CDU to exploratory talks but came up very quickly with the decision to continue with the former left coalition . The coalition contract issued by the three coalition parties formulates ambitious goals with respect to investigations in the infrastructure, the ecological transformation of industries, and the increase of personnel in the education system, but remains vague with regard to their financing . The coalition plans to use money for many of these projects from the so-called climate-fonds that was already adopted in the last election period . Against this background the CDU announced that it will call the Bremer Staatsgerichtshof for a judicial review of constitutionality because the budgetary rights of the parliament may be violated by credit authorization without the parliament . Finally, the coalition decided to reallocate senate portfolios . Five portfolios went to the SPD, two to the Greens and the Left Party . Additionally, the representative of Bremen for national and European affairs from the SPD joins the senate in the function of a state councilor .