Citizens' assemblies come to Hamburg
Hamburg is the only German state that has never had a citizens' assembly. If the SPD and the Greens have their way, this will soon change.
At district level, the two parties want to ‘trial the random selection of citizens in thematic and time-limited participation procedures and evaluate the experience with them.’ This is stated in the coalition agreement between the SPD and the Greens published on 29 April 2025. Both parties had won a majority together in the parliamentary elections on 2 March 2025.
Random participation act
In June 2024, the Hamburg State Parliament passed a Random Participation Act that defines what is known as ‘deliberative democracy’. This serves to ‘identify interests and possible solutions from the population on a specific topic or project’. The law also allows the Hamburg authorities to use residents‘ registration data to randomly select members of mini-publics.
In its proposals for the coalition agreement, the NGO ‘Mehr Demokratie’ had called for a legal obligation to utilise this space. ‘Hamburg should swiftly implement Article 56 of the Hamburg Constitution, which has been pending since November 2020, and oblige the Senate to consult those affected and the relevant civil society on important projects,’ Mehr Demokratie's position paper states. Under Article 56, the administration is ‘committed to the common good and the principles of proximity to citizens and transparency’.
Scepticism and curiosity
Mehr Demokratie encourages the use of citizens' assemblies in the Hanseatic city. ‘In discussions with party representatives, you can sense scepticism and curiosity about this instrument. I hope that politicians will have the courage, perhaps even the joy of discovery, that we so urgently need for lively social processes,‘ says Tim Weyrauch, a former participant in the federal Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy, which took place in 2019, and a member of the state board of Mehr Demokratie since 2023.
Other German cities with over a million inhabitants are far ahead of Hamburg when it comes to citizens' assemblies. Berlin, for example, already has 27 mini-publics. In Munich, the Citizens' Assembly Database counts eight cases.
Pioneer: City of Cologne
The city of Cologne can even be considered a pioneer among the megacities. As early as 1979, randomly selected planning cells formulated recommendations for the design of the area between the historic town hall and the medieval Gürzenich venue. The citizens' suggestions were adopted by the city council at the time and implemented by the administration.
By the end of April 2025, 282 mini-publics had been held in Germany at municipal and state level. 44 other mini-publics are currently running or being planned. The focus is on the states of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia.