FDP Group Calls for the Re-establishment of the Passau Youth Council

Automatically translated from German. Read the original

The FDP group on Passau city council is calling for a youth council to be re-established for the city of Passau. The initiative came from Nick Haug, treasurer of the Young Liberals Passau and state treasurer of the JuLis Bavaria, and Simon Wrana of the Liberal University Group Passau, who presented the group with a fully worked-out proposal. Passau already had a youth council from 1997 until the mid-2000s; a cross-party motion to revive it in 2014 produced no lasting result. The FDP group is now proposing that the administration, together with the city youth association (Stadtjugendring), present draft statutes by the end of November 2026 – based on the proven models in Regensburg, Erlangen and Ingolstadt. The key points are to be a binding right to submit motions to the city council with a three-month deadline for dealing with them, plus a dedicated budget, a full-time office, online elections and a low-threshold digital participation platform for all children and young people in Passau. The aim is for the new council to hold its inaugural meeting in early 2027.

“It is a nice political twist that the suggestion didn’t come from us older ones, but from Nick and Simon,” says Sebastian Frankenberger, deputy chairman of the FDP group, who was himself a member of the Passau youth council in the late 1990s. “That is exactly how it should be: the generation that wants to have a say approaches us itself. As a teenager on the Passau youth council, I experienced what it means to be taken seriously with your own ideas – that shapes a person more than any civics lesson. What we lost in the mid-2000s we are now bringing back, only better: binding, digital and reaching beyond the city limits.”

Nick Haug stresses what matters from his point of view: “If you tell young people they should take an interest in democracy, you also have to give them a place where their voice actually has an effect. We have seen enough symbolic councils without the right to submit motions. We want a youth council whose motions must be debated in the city council within three months. That is the decisive difference between participation and occupational therapy.” Simon Wrana adds, with a view to Passau’s role as a city of schools and a university: “Anyone who goes to school or studies here belongs to this city – even without having their main residence here. Ingolstadt shows that this can be set out cleanly in the statutes. And in 2026, an in-person-only election with ballot papers and a ballot box is no longer a serious option. We need online voting, otherwise we won’t reach half of those eligible to vote.”

Comparable Bavarian cities have been running functioning youth representations for years: Erlangen has had its youth parliament since 2002, and Regensburg has had a formal youth council established by statute under Article 23 of the Bavarian Municipal Code since 2015. In Erlangen, motions from the youth parliament must be dealt with by the city council within three months – the FDP group wants this model for Passau too. The supplementary digital platform is intended to ensure that not only the 15 to 21 elected council members are heard, but that every pupil and every apprentice in Passau can contribute ideas for the council to take up. Proven open-source solutions such as OPIN, Consul or Adhocracy+ have been tested in many German municipalities. During the 2026 local election campaign, practically all the parties that won seats on the city council spoke out in favour of better structural youth participation. The FDP group therefore expressly invites all groups to work out the specific design of the statutes together and now to deliver jointly on this shared election promise.

The post FDP-Fraktion beantragt Wiedereinrichtung des Passauer Jugendbeirats first appeared on FDP Fraktion | TEAM Putzke.

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