After four and a half hours, 119 comrades say yes.

It's about the structural reform of the Frankfurt SPD.

The party should become more powerful and more visible.

The 119 comrades are only a small part of the sub-district's 3,500 members, but at the end of the digital general meeting, they still form a majority of 77 percent of the participants.

On Saturday, 22 SPD members voted against the board's draft resolution, 13 abstained.

154 participants voted online.

Florentine Fritzen

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Before that, the members discussed the proposals that the deputy SPD chairman Kolja Müller had worked out with board colleagues Sebastian Maier and Katharina Stier.

In the verbal contributions and in the chat it is about content and even more about formal concerns.

SPD a “join-in party”?

In terms of content, some comrades reject the plan to introduce a new level between the executive board and the lower level of the local associations, namely five city associations.

As the party chairman Mike Josef said at the beginning, in Bochum, for example, it was possible to gain and keep members in this way.

His deputy, Müller, advocates more individual projects, “because people prefer to get involved on a selective basis”.

This Saturday, some local association chairmen feel little of the fact that the board sees the SPD as a “participatory party”.

Gerold Hombach from Ostend complains that he has not received an inquiry about participation in the reform process. Tanja Clauss from Nordweststadt-Süd says she found out about it from the newspaper.

Stefanie Then from Niederrad is surprised that even more staff should be tied up with a new level in times when “the active people are dwindling”.

Annual party conference as a "highlight"

Two amendments deal with the plan to reduce the key for delegates to the annual convention.

The number is to drop from the current 350 delegates to between 250 and 280.

The Jusos fear less participation for young people, for whom the appointment is always a "highlight".

Your wording, leaving the key unchanged and examining more digital participation, was later adopted by 75 votes to 63 with 17 abstentions and is included in the paper as an amendment.

In the hours before, a lot, a lot, was about formal doubts.

As the board emphasizes, the general meeting should only decide on a draft resolution, not the reform itself. The statutes can only be changed at the annual party conference in July.

Mike Josef warns against overcomplicating everything.

Working “outside” is more important than a long-term debate about the internal structure.

The vote is just about agreeing on a direction in which the board should think further.

But the paper sets the cornerstones for this direction, such as the city associations and the downsizing of the party congress, which was later canceled.

And so a dispute ignites over the fundamental question of the extent to which a resolution cements preliminary decisions by the board of directors.

Kolja Müller warns against voting on an amendment that was eventually rejected,

The leader of the Roman parliamentary group, Ursula Busch, proposes formulating an order for the board to examine the question of the new level separately.

The bureau says this motion comes too late.

Mayor Peter Feldmann helps Busch, a lot gets mixed up, and the technology also fails in between.

"Meeting management Grade 6," complains one.

Busch campaigns to accept an amendment by Hans-Georg Weigel from Hausen.

The plan is not to make a decision yet.

38 percent vote for, 48 percent against.

When the overall paper, including the Juso amendment, was finally voted on, things calmed down.

The chat is about the game Eintracht vs. Stuttgart.

But not everyone agrees on that either.