By German Press Agency
Translation by Raymond R. Watson, M.A.
Referendum? For real this time.
In support of a basic income pilot project 95,000 signatures were collected. The referendum could take place parallel to the German federal election.
The people’s initiative “Hamburg Tests Basic Income” has, according to its own sources, successfully completed its petition as the second and final stage before a possible referendum. The initiators handed over a total of 95,842 signatures to the Hamburger state election office in the Ministry of the Interior – and with over 30,000 more than necessary. “After three really intense weeks, we are super relieved that this worked,” said initiative spokeswoman Laura Braemswig.
The initiators want to implement the first state pilot project for an unconditional basic income in Germany. The project is to be scientifically evaluated. “And we want to contribute to the discussion no longer being about whether we want a basic income, but about what kind of a basic income we want,” said Braemswig.
According to the initiators’ concept, the pilot project will run three years long and provide 2,000 people with a basic income. For this purpose, streets in Hamburg will be selected that are preferably representative of the entire population. “Everyone who lives on this street can then take part in the experiment.”
The aim is to investigate what this does to people, how their lives change – whether at work, in social settings or among family. “We are interested in all of this,” said Braemswig.
The experiment is expected to cost just below 46 million euros.
According to the draft bill of the initiative, the maximum, total costs for the model project may not exceed 0.23 percent of the total budget of Hanseatic city Hamburg. “In the reference year presumed to be 2026 with a total budget of 20.24 billion euros outlined according to mid term financial planning, this amount would correspond to a sum of around 45.9 million euros.”
There is a period of six weeks for canvassing, thus whether enough valid signatures have actually been submitted. If this is the case, a referendum could be held parallel to Germany’s federal election on September 25, 2025.
The probability that the Social Democrats and Green party coalition will agree to the proposal and dispense with the need for the referendum is relatively low. The SPD considers the project to be a scam. Moreover, there are already numerous studies on the subject.
At the beginning of 2020 the initiative had already collected the necessary number of 10,000 valid signatures. However, a subsequently planned referendum was halted by the Hamburg Constitutional Court in the summer of last year upon request of the Social Democrats and Green party Senate. The authors then revised their bill, put out a new initiative and collected more than 16,000 signatures.
