Let's face the future with courage!

The Capital City Business Community Calls for Faster New Construction, Better Education, Faster Fund Transfers, and the Completion of Administrative Reform 

Text Sebastian Thomas | Head of Communications and Marketing

Unter der Überschrift „Mut zur Zukunft“ haben wir bei einem Pressefrühstück unsere Wahlagenda zur Berlin-Wahl 2026 vorgelegt. Im Vorfeld der Abgeordnetenhauswahl am 20. September formulieren wir darin die zentralen Erwartungen der Berliner Wirtschaft an die künftige Landespolitik. Unsere Botschaft ist klar: Berlin hat große Stärken – muss sie aber schneller in konkrete Ergebnisse übersetzen.

Gemeinsam mit Vertreterinnen und Vertretern unserer Ausschüsse hat VBKI-Präsident Prof. Harald Christ die Positionen des Vereins vorgestellt. Sein Appell:

With our agenda, we are making a nonpartisan contribution to the debate and extending an offer of dialogue to any democratic coalition formed after the election. Four priorities are at the heart of our agenda: We want to strengthen growth and competitiveness, bring innovations to market more quickly, increase Berlin’s capacity for action and resilience, and confidently position the capital as an international metropolis. In doing so, we are focusing on three key areas for the future: housing and urban development, education and science, and the healthcare industry.

Housing: Speeding Up New Construction
When it comes to housing, we are committed to faster planning and permitting processes, as well as an investment-friendly housing policy. Our goal is for planning and permitting processes to be completed, as a rule, within a maximum of two years. We believe that public ownership is the wrong approach: it does not create a single new apartment, ties up significant resources, and undermines the investor confidence that Berlin urgently needs.

Strengthening Education and Science
In the field of education, we call for measurable progress in educational quality, basic skills, and language support. A Berlin-wide education monitoring system and strengthened school leadership are intended to help improve quality in the long term.
At the same time, Berlin must continue to expand its universities and research institutions as a strategic competitive advantage. The backlog of renovations must be cleared, the transfer of scientific findings into practice must be accelerated, and the creation of spin-off companies must be facilitated. Artificial intelligence should be utilized much more extensively as a driver of productivity and innovation in education, science, public administration, and the economy.

The Healthcare Industry as an Industry of the Future
We view the healthcare industry as a strategic key market for the capital. Berlin boasts an exceptional concentration of university hospitals, research institutions, clinics, and companies in the biotech, medtech, and healthtech sectors. We must consistently harness this potential to develop Berlin into Europe’s healthcare capital by 2030. This requires faster translation of research into practice, better framework conditions for clinical trials, more scale-up capital, and a commitment to positioning Berlin as a leading hub for data-driven health innovation within the European Health Data Space (EHDS).

An Efficient Administration as the Key
For us, an administration capable of taking action is the fundamental prerequisite for accelerating progress in the capital. That is why we call for the consistent completion of administrative reform, the clear delineation of responsibilities between the state and the districts, the digitization of procedures, and more binding decision-making processes. Administration is a matter of location policy—it must enable innovation, investment, and growth.

Specifically, we are setting forth 10 key demands:

1. Speed up construction: Limit planning and permitting processes to a maximum of two years.

2. Build more instead of redistributing: Expropriation does not solve the housing shortage—it makes it worse.

3. Empowering the administration to act: Complete the reform; strengthen citywide governance.

4. Make Berlin resilient to crises: Eliminate the investment backlog, secure critical infrastructure, and prioritize internal security and the fight against right-wing and left-wing extremism.

5. Ensure the quality of education: Upgrade schools and provide them with resources tailored to their needs; strengthen school leadership; and introduce educational monitoring.

6. Turning Knowledge into Impact: Modernizing universities, accelerating knowledge transfer, and strengthening spin-offs.

7. Develop the healthcare industry as Berlin’s strategic flagship market.

8. Mobility without ideology: Intelligently connect all modes of transportation, improve public transit, and finally resolve its quality issues.

9. Attracting Talent to Berlin: Developing Berlin into an open, high-performing, and internationally recognized hub for talent.

10. Use major events such as the Olympics as projects for Berlin's future.

Die VBKI-Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer des Pressefrühstücks: Prof. Dr. Jörg Ritter (VBKI-Präsidiumsmitglied, VBKI-Vertreter „Verwaltungsreform“) , Christian Schulz-Wulkow (Vorsitzender Ausschuss Immobilien), Prof. Dr. Stefanie Molthagen-Schnöring (Vorsitzende Ausschuss Bildung und Wissenschaft), Prof. Harald Christ (VBKI-Präsident), Michael Müller (Vorsitzender Ausschuss Wirtschaftspolitik), Dr. André Stürzenbecher (Vorsitzender Ausschuss Gesundheit)

Unsere Wahlagenda ist aus der Breite unseres Vereins heraus entstanden. Alle ehrenamtlich besetzten Ausschüsse des VBKI haben daran mitgewirkt. Unternehmerinnen und Unternehmer sowie Expertinnen und Experten aus Wissenschaft, Bildung, Gesundheit, Wohnungswirtschaft, Mobilität, Kultur, Digitalisierung und weiteren Bereichen haben ihre Perspektiven eingebracht.