Dieter Reiter’s outrage is quite believable, but he also knows that the CSU, as Mayor of Munich and as SPD politician, has given him a template that he has to use politically: Kerstin Schreyer, the CSU building minister from Bavaria, tries through the Federal Council to stop a law for better protection of tenants from the house of the CSU Federal Building Minister Horst Seehofer. “A relatively unbelievable process,” says Reiter with a trembling voice this Wednesday in the planning committee of the Munich City Council, “and only conceivable if you know which side you are on: Ms. Schreyer is on the side of the speculators, and there is also the CSU “.
Only recently Schreyer said that in times of the pandemic one had to keep an eye on the situation of the tenants, said Reiter. “Thank you, then she should rather close her eyes. Because that sounds like mockery to the ears of the Munich tenants”. And with great pleasure, so Reiter concluded his short speech, he would “bring it closer to Prime Minister Markus Söder in very clear terms. I will ask him what the position of the CSU chairman is on the subject.”
He received the order for this on Wednesday, the city council passed an urgency motion with the votes of the green-red majority and the opposition left. According to this, Reiter should work at Söder to ensure that Bavaria withdraws its application to bring the building land mobilization law passed by the Bundestag last week to the mediation committee via the Federal Council.
This law, which the Berlin coalition of CDU / CSU and SPD surprisingly agreed last week after a long struggle, is intended to give municipalities with a tight housing market more opportunities to protect tenants from displacement. Cities like Munich should be able to issue a city-wide ban on converting rental apartments into condominiums. And the municipalities should, if they take over a property with the right of first refusal, no longer have to pay the price, which is often driven up by property speculation, on which the seller and buyer have agreed, but the market value.
The Federal Council gave the first signal on Wednesday that it could be difficult for Bavaria to get the issue into the mediation committee. The Federal Council Committee on Housing, whose deliberations and voting results are not public, rejected the request from Bavaria with ten out of 16 votes, according to SZ information, three states are said to have abstained, three voted in favor: Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony .
“I am glad that the sniper attacks by the Laschet and Söder governments against their own building minister and the Union parliamentary group quickly hit the wall,” said Sören Bartol, deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. “Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia are shooting against such an important law for affordable housing – that shows once again how indifferent they are to the interests of municipalities and tenants.”
However, after this committee vote, it is not certain that Bavaria will fail with its application. Because in the Federal Council, the majority ratios differ between the committee, in which each country has one vote, and the plenary, in which the number of votes is linked to the size of the country. In addition, the responsible state minister sits on the committee, while the plenum, which will meet for the next time on May 28, will be voted on by the respective governing coalition, which may not be able to assemble behind the vote of the specialist ministry – and therefore abstains . If the Federal Council clears the way, the law could come into force on July 1st.
The debate in the Munich City Council also showed how difficult the topic is for the CSU. Heike Kainz, the political group’s spokeswoman for planning, writhed in her speech. Calling the mediation committee is “a legal right”. And the law has so much content that you can “not just say yes or no to it. There is a wealth of regulations that we partially endorse”. “I don’t want to take a position on the actions of Building Minister Schreyer,” said Kainz.
FDP city councilor Jörg Hoffmann tied in with this: “If the CSU doesn’t commit to its minister, I’ll do it.” Schreyer speaks of an “anti-investment orientation” of the law. “You don’t have to add anything to that,” said Hoffmann, the woman is right. ” In any case, he has “never been able to understand the contrast between” supposedly bad condominiums and good rental apartments “.
And what does Markus Söder say about the matter? He found the whole thing “unproblematic”, he told the SZ on Wednesday. There are “still concerns” about the law, in the parliamentary group as well as in the CSU state group. It was also “difficult to implement” in the coalition in Berlin, “that is why we are trying to achieve improvements”. But Söder also emphasizes: “There will be no failure of the law.” The Federal Council committee “now warned” about the desire for improvement.
Bavaria’s building minister Schreyer has already come to terms with the fact that nothing will come of the mediation committee. Your spokesman says that the rejection of the Federal Council Committee “clearly shows the direction in which it is going. However, we as the Free State will still make substantive proposals for more building land mobilization.”
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