Corona, war, high energy prices: city politics slides from one crisis to the next, with politicians throwing cowardice, arrogance and much more at each other. It’s time to let the emotions subside during the holidays – and move the city forward.
The leader of the SPD parliamentary group, Anne Hübner, is a great friend of the Twitter news service. There, the big picture of life is often reduced to the maximum of 280 characters in a message, which often leads to communicative accidents. Hübner has experienced this herself, but she always manages to get to the heart of everyday politics in a nutshell. “A different theater than the usual,” she wrote at the weekend, and published photos from a visit to the Passion Play in Oberammergau. You can read that as 33 letters of joy about the summer break in city politics. But there are also seven months in the town hall full of emotions and decisions that can also be described as a tale of woe.
The year began with a self-imposed political lockdown, the pandemic more or less forced the town hall to a standstill. As soon as operations were up and running again, the war in the Ukraine also shaped everyday life in Munich. The speech by Vitali Klitschko, mayor of the twin city of Kyiv, broadcast in the city council via video stream, not only deeply touched his Munich colleague Dieter Reiter (SPD). Since then, it has become increasingly clear that one crisis does not supersede the other, but rather that they overlap. Who would have thought at the beginning of the year that the city councilors would not only be concerned with dealing with the virus, but that they would seriously have to set up an aid fund so that poorer residents of Munich could also heat their rooms in winter?
Money is getting scarcer, but the pressure is already enormous
Corona, war, energy price inflation – against this background, the 80 city councilors and mayors are trying to shape the future. This is also about the fundamentals: the climate crisis will not take other emergencies into account, and the Munich City Council must prepare for this. The best solutions are and must be disputed, always with the burden that the money for them is becoming scarcer. The pressure on the city councilors of all factions is enormous. Two pieces of news made the burden even greater: the city should wait another nine years until 2037 for the second main S-Bahn line, which is considered the backbone of the traffic turnaround. In addition, the supply of the citizens could become so uncertain in the energy crisis that even the Greens are at least considering a temporary continued operation of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant.
The general assembly last week showed how high this pressure is and how much the summer break is necessary for all city councilors: The CSU tackled the Greens hard when it came to electing the new IT officer, and they again attacked Mayor Dieter Reiter ( SPD) personally as listless and disinterested. The coalition partners SPD and Greens insulted each other when reforming the migration advisory board, which could make you dizzy. Cowardice and arrogance they threw at each other, and much more besides.
A few weeks break will do city politics good. Everyone should use the time to recharge their batteries and let the emotions subside. The decisions won’t get any easier after the summer holidays, it’s important to keep an eye on the big picture and also to move the city forward on a small scale. The city council has repeatedly held tough discussions over the past few years, but it has also been characterized by collegiality for the benefit of Munich. Finding this cohesion again will be crucial if urban society is not to be torn apart. The challenges of the coming years can only be mastered together.