Youth Policy Spokesperson: FDP Wants Young People to Choose
The FDP group on Passau city council supports Lord Mayor Andreas Rother’s proposal to create the post of youth policy spokesperson – and wants to extend it by a …
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The FDP group on Passau city council supports Lord Mayor Andreas Rother’s proposal to create the post of youth policy spokesperson – and wants to extend it by a decisive democratic step. Instead of the Lord Mayor appointing someone, Passau’s young people themselves should decide who is their voice in the town hall. “Whoever represents young people should be elected by young people. This is not a sign of mistrust towards the Lord Mayor, but a democratic development of his good idea,” says group chairman Prof. Dr. Holm Putzke. The Lord Mayor provided the impetus, he said, and the FDP wants to work with the other groups to turn it into the Bavarian gold standard. Under the FDP model, all interested city council members from all groups – especially the younger ones – are expressly invited to apply; the question of who fills the post thus becomes a fair competition of ideas rather than a foregone conclusion.
Prof. Georg Steiner points to how cleanly the proposal can be implemented in legal and administrative terms: “Appointing commissioners is a matter for the city council, not for a single person. We can tie the selection procedure to a vote by young people – through advisory council statutes under Article 23 of the Bavarian Municipal Code, as Regensburg, Erlangen and Ingolstadt have long been doing,” he explains. These cities show that youth elections work – in 2021 Ingolstadt even held Bavaria’s first online youth election. The FDP group bases its proposal on the current state of research: the nationwide study by Roland Roth and Waldemar Stange for the German Children’s Fund (Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk) and the Bertelsmann study “mitWirkung!” show that only directly participatory, elected forms of participation lead to genuine self-efficacy, democratic education and sustainable structures, whereas individual posts without democratic legitimacy often remain symbolic. In the coming days, the FDP group will send all other city council members a detailed briefing with the most important study findings, legal foundations and comparative models, so that the deliberations on 7 July can take place on a shared, well-founded basis of knowledge.
Sebastian Frankenberger emphasises the closeness to citizens and the educational benefit: “In this way, young people experience a real election – with candidacies, programmes and a vote. That is democratic education in practice and creates real self-efficacy,” he adds. Specifically, the FDP proposes a two-stage procedure: first, 14- to 21-year-olds elect a youth council; this council then chooses the youth policy spokesperson from among the city council members who have applied, and that person is then formally appointed by the city council. It should be possible to vote digitally and at schools, and the term of office is to be two years. The FDP group expressly makes clear that its proposal is not directed against any individual: every candidate named so far would have every chance in an open election. The sole aim is to give the selection democratic legitimacy. The group is tabling the corresponding amendment at the meeting of the Committee for Children, Youth and Family on 7 July 2026 and invites all other groups to adopt a common line.
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