Citizens' budget 2026: Your voice counts until August 22nd in Bernau!

Citizens' budget 2026: Your voice counts until August 22nd in Bernau!

Bernau, Deutschland - In Bernau, the online vote for the community budget 2026 is in full swing. Around 650 citizens have given their votes since June 30, 2025. The vote runs until the last ballot is counted on August 22, 2025. On the city website, all participants can fill out their personal voting sheets in a few minutes. There are 19 proposals to choose from. Everyone has the opportunity to distribute five points over one or more suggestions.

In order to take part in the vote, some information must be given, including first and last name, date of birth, email address and address. For those who prefer it, there are alternatives to the online vote: A coordination sheet in paper form has been published in the Bernauer Official Journal and a voting day will take place on August 31 in the city park. A total of 56 proposals have been received by February 28, 2025, and citizens from the age of 14 can actively participate in the decision on the use of urban funds that have been 100,000 euros annually since 2013.

An important process of citizen participation

Citizens' households, as they are also practiced in Bernau, are a clear expression of citizen participation in municipal financial planning. This form of participation was developed at the end of the 1980s and aims to involve the public in the use of the financial resources - from the suggestion phase to binding decisions. The first community budget took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989 and has been used worldwide since then.

Typical topics in the community budget concern local finances and local commitment. In Germany, this model was mainly encouraged by the local agenda 21. Although participation has decreased in many cities, Bernau shows that there is an interest in transparency and participation. The city administration has already offered the opportunity to participate in the community budget for the 14th time.

The challenge of citizen participation

But where is the challenge? A decline in the number of participants and identification of participation barriers are problems that many municipalities employ. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the number of community budgets fell from 37 in 2011 to only 16 in 2016. Nevertheless, the idea remains behind the community budget to include citizens in decisions and thus strengthen democracy at local level, resistant.

Details on the coordination and the proposals can be found on the city's official website: Bernauer Bürgerhaushalt .