Lord Mayor Peter Feldmann is no longer trusted.” This is the headline of the Roman coalition in a motion that the parliamentary groups of the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt decided separately on Wednesday evening and still urgently want to place on the agenda of the next city council meeting on Thursday.

The coalition hopes that a large majority will vote in favor of the motion and that it will finally be made clear to the SPD mayor that the city parliament no longer has “the necessary trust for further office management”.

In the words of SPD parliamentary group leader Ursula Busch, the Feldmann coalition is "once again offering the possibility of self-determined resignation."

Mechthild Harting

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Manfred Koehler

Head of department of the Rhein-Main editorial team of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

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For the last time - because the "motion of no confidence" also contains an ultimatum for the mayor.

If Feldmann does not "make his office available with immediate effect" as requested in the application, the coalition will initiate the voting-out procedure in the plenary session on July 14, the application states.

"For us, the deselection remains the ultima ratio," says Busch.

Initiating such proceedings against an SPD mayor “is not easy for anyone in the SPD parliamentary group”.

At their meeting on Wednesday, however, the members agreed that if the "motion of no confidence" found a broad majority and Feldmann did not react to it, then the next step would have to be to vote out of office.

Feldmann himself was present at the internal group discussion.

It is said that he took part in the discussion.

For Busch, this is a sign of her party's culture of democratic debate.

In the SPD, it is customary to “say things straight to your face”.

The expectation that it was therefore heated and emotional was reportedly not fulfilled.

There was a "calm, clear, respectful handling of the discussion," said Busch.

Application for deselection should be prevented

According to the Greens, this “motion of no confidence” is “the last attempt” to persuade Feldmann to resign from office.

Finally, on Monday, the district court allowed the public prosecutor's office to charge the mayor.

He will have to answer in court for allegations of accepting benefits in connection with the AWO scandal.

In the “motion of no confidence”, the coalition also accuses him of “misconduct”, which made it more than clear “that Peter Feldmann is obviously not in a position to continue to exercise his office appropriately”.

According to the leaders of the Greens, Tina Zapf-Rodríguez and Dimitrios Bakakis, Feldmann has "finally lost the trust of the population and the city parliament".

The mayor still refuses to draw the consequences from the indictment and his misconduct.

The Greens therefore feel compelled to submit a "motion of no confidence" as a coalition partner.

According to Bakakis, the aim is to prevent the vote-out application.

Because "it is risky, destructive and expensive," said the Green politician.

"We want to spare the city that," and Feldmann should also spare the people of Frankfurt.

The city's municipal election officer, Tarkan Akman, had confirmed to the FAZ that the costs of a vote-out procedure were estimated at 1.6 million euros.

According to Bakakis, the vote-out procedure is “risky and destructive” because it is not in the hands of the city parliament to vote out the mayor, who has been twice confirmed by Frankfurt.

"We can only submit the wish to vote out of office to the population," says Bakakis.

“Local politics at its ugliest”

In the first step, at least half of the city councilors must sign the vote-out application for submission to the city parliament.

A two-thirds majority is required for the vote itself.

According to the municipal elections law, the citizens' vote on Feldmann's future must then take place within a period of three to six months after the decision of the city councillors.

If they vote in favor on July 14, the vote would have to take place between October 14 and January 13.

The autumn holidays from October 24th to 29th and the Christmas holidays from December 22nd to January 7th fall during this period, which significantly reduces the number of Sundays that can be used.

Above all, according to the municipal code, 30 percent of all those eligible to vote would have to vote for Feldmann's deselection, that would be around 154,000 Frankfurters.

This is a high hurdle, because only just under 38 percent of voters took part in the 2018 mayoral election and only 30 percent in the runoff.

For the coalition politicians in Römer, this means that “we have to conduct a negative campaign against Lord Mayor Feldmann for weeks and months.

That's just destructive," says Green Party leader Bakakis.

Because with such a campaign "local politics shows its ugliest side".