© dpa
The Berlin Senate will discuss on Tuesday whether the city centre should soon become largely car-free.
This is the demand of a citizens' initiative that wants to push through a petition for a referendum. However, according to the Berlin Senate Department of the Interior, the draft law it has presented violates the Basic Law. The Senate must now formulate a position on this and also formally adopt it. This is expected for the session on Tuesday. The transport administration must present the bill for this, which transport senator Bettina Jarasch (Greens) wants to explain to her senate colleagues.
According to the ideas of the initiative "Volksentscheid Berlin autofrei" (Referendum Berlin Car-Free), almost all streets within the S-Bahn ring should become car-reduced areas. More than 50,000 Berliners signed for this last year. The 20,000 valid votes required for the first stage of the referendum were thus achieved. If the entire senate joins the interior administration, which is to be expected, there will not be a referendum on the initiative. Whether there is actually a violation of the Basic Law would then have to be decided by the State Constitutional Court.
Senator for Education Astrid-Sabine Busse (SPD) also presents a report to the Senate on how the school construction campaign is progressing. The lack of school places in the face of rising pupil numbers has been an ongoing issue in Berlin in recent years. After the kick-off meeting in the last week of April, the Senate Commission on Housing Construction will meet for the second time directly after the Senate meeting. Its task is to steer large-scale housing projects across all departments and to check what is wrong if things are not progressing as hoped. The press conference following the Senate meeting is therefore not scheduled to begin until 2 pm. Franziska Giffey (SPD), the mayor of Berlin, and Bettina Jarasch, the senator for transport, have announced that they will attend.