Coronavirus: Thuringia postpones state elections

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Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow and the Thuringian government agreed to postpone the state elections

Photo: Martin Schutt / dpa

In response to the dramatically high number of corona infections, the election of the Thuringian state parliament has been postponed to September 26th.

Left, SPD, Greens and CDU have agreed on this, as their top politicians announced in Erfurt.

Parliament is not supposed to be dissolved in mid-February, as was initially planned.

Because the parties were concerned about the feasibility of a state election due to the corona crisis, the previously planned date of April 25 will be canceled.

"The parties involved have agreed, with shared responsibility for democracy, health protection and civil rights, to postpone the election of the Thuringian state parliament to September 26, 2021 in view of the ongoing pandemic," reads the minutes of the parties' talks published by SPIEGEL present.

On September 26th, the Bundestag, the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the House of Representatives in Berlin will be elected.

Thuringia's left parliamentary group and state party leader Susanne Hennig-Wellsow said that this was the earliest possible time in view of the pandemic situation.

Unlike in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, where the state parliaments are to be regularly elected in March, preparations in Thuringia can only start after the state parliament has been dissolved.

Accordingly, it seemed uncertain when the candidate list and the party congress in the spring will be possible at all.

A red-red-green minority government led by Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) is currently in power in Thuringia.

It is dependent on cooperation with the opposition CDU.

The four parties had agreed on the early state elections in order to create the clearest possible majority in parliament.

Regular elections in Thuringia would not take place until 2024.

In the minutes it is said that the parties continue to stand by the jointly determined need "to re-elect the state parliament ahead of time to ensure stable political conditions in Thuringia."

By the end of January, the left, the SPD, the Greens and the CDU want to negotiate how they want to continue their previous stability pact.

The protocol states that "those involved confess to continue to stand by the principles of the expired stability mechanism".

The four parties agreed on the pact in the Thuringian government crisis in March 2020 after the FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich was also elected short-term prime minister with AfD votes.

Thuringia has the highest incidence of the federal states.

The seven-day value, which measures the infections per 100,000 inhabitants, was 310 on Thursday.

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hba / til / dpa