interview
Status: 06.01.2022 11:45 a.m.
Bijan Djir-Sarai is to take over the office of General Secretary at the FDP. In the interview he talks about the party’s change of course, the upcoming state elections and the question of a quota for women.
tagesschau.de: The FDP has clearly deviated from the original course in budget policy. How do you intend to prevent voters from turning away disappointed?
Bijan Djir-Sarai: The Free Democrats continue to stand for a solid budget and financial policy that also has the younger generation in mind. The current supplementary budget of the coalition is necessary to cope with the corona crisis in order to be able to make investments in connection with the pandemic. Because our goal is to get out of the crisis with climate-friendly technologies and investments in competitiveness. It is important that we do not take out any new loans, but only use existing authorizations. The debt brake should then apply again from 2023.
To person
Bijan Djir-Sarai is to be officially elected as the new General Secretary of the FDP in April. Party leader Christian Lindner proposed him shortly before Christmas for the office that Djir-Sarai had already taken over from Volker Wissing on a provisional basis. Wissing became Federal Minister for Digital and Transport. 45-year-old Djir-Sarai was born in Tehran and came to Germany as a child. The business administration graduate is at home in Neuss, and in the Bundestag he focuses on foreign policy.
tagesschau.de: The course has also been changed when it comes to compulsory vaccination.
Djir-Sarai: The discussion about the possible introduction of a general compulsory vaccination and its possible concrete form is an ethical-medical and legal debate, not primarily a political one. Hence, by the way, the intense debates on this in all other parties or parliamentary groups in the German Bundestag. It is therefore logical that there will be a debate or decision in the Bundestag without parliamentary group discipline, with group motions. Thus, in this case, the MPs will make a decision of conscience.
tagesschau.de: Even after the repositioning and filling of posts in the government, the low representation of women is noticeable. Doesn’t the FDP care or does it not need a quota for women after all?
Djir-Sarai: I am convinced that politics as a whole still have major challenges ahead of them when it comes to diversity. But I also see it as an important task for me to strengthen the proportion of women in management positions at the FDP. In the elections for the federal executive committee of the FDP, we succeeded in significantly increasing the proportion of women last year. Here we are now at almost 40 percent. My goal is to keep increasing that number.
tagesschau.de: What are your goals for the upcoming state elections this year?
Djir-Sarai: As the FDP, we will achieve good results in the upcoming state elections this year in Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. Our regional associations are excellently positioned and I am looking forward to the local election campaigns.