Overview
- On Tuesday Nouripour restated to the Süddeutsche Zeitung that federal and municipal votes should be held on one day and all state parliaments on a second day to produce defined campaign-free periods.
- The plan would require changing the Bundestag and Bremen from four- to five-year terms because 15 of 16 states already use five-year Landtag cycles.
- Nouripour says constant campaigning causes short-term thinking and stalls major reforms by forcing politics to focus on the next election rather than long-range policy.
- The proposal faces clear political and legal hurdles, with Bavaria’s CSU leadership rejecting it as an overreach and implementation needing consent from the Länder under the constitution.
- Nouripour linked the proposal to rising concern about possible AfD participation in state governments and said the right response is practical measures rather than panic while warning of risks to democratic institutions.