German court orders repeat of 2021 election in parts of Berlin

BERLIN -- Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that the 2021 national election must be repeated in parts of Berlin in February next year. Around a fifth of the capital city's voting districts are affected.

During the election in September 2021, many voters were unable to cast their ballots due to long queues and waiting times at the polling stations. Cast ballots went missing and some polling stations closed early while others stayed open late.

The response by the Bundestag (lower house of Parliament), which had decided on a smaller-scale election rerun last year, was "inadequate," the Constitutional Court ruled, pointing out that not all data from the individual constituencies had been evaluated.

Berlin's state election, which took place on the same day as the Bundestag election, already had to be fully repeated earlier this year. As a result, a new state government was formed, in which the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took over from Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The Berlin government has "created all the necessary conditions for elections in Berlin to work again," Governing Mayor Kai Wegner said on Tuesday, adding that he was confident that there would be no election glitches this time.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis, Germany is struggling to shake off the economic crisis, which was only exacerbated by the recent failure to reallocate 60 billion euros (66 billion US dollars) in COVID-19 relief funds to the Climate and Transformation Fund.

Leading economic institutes have lowered their gross domestic product growth forecasts for next year and now only see a slight recovery with growth between 0.5 and 0.9 percent in 2024, after a 0.3 percent recession this year.