SPD parliamentary party leader Raed Saleh in interview: "Where, dear Lars Klingbeil, is the promised reform?"
Berlin's SPD is at only 13 percent in the polls. In an interview, parliamentary party leader Raed Saleh explains how his party wants to turn things around.
By Oliver Weinlein and Sophie-Marie Schulz | 02.08.2026, 4:55 PM
Few politicians have shaped Berlin's SPD as strongly over the past decade and a half as Raed Saleh. The long-serving parliamentary party leader is regarded as the party's political center of power. Yet a few weeks before the election to the Berlin House of Representatives, the SPD faces a difficult starting position: in current polls, it is only at 13 percent.
In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, Saleh talks about the state of social democracy, his criticism of the federal party, the withdrawal of Neukölln district mayor Martin Hikel, and the question of how the Berlin SPD wants to win back trust.
Mr. Saleh, you have headed the SPD parliamentary group for almost 15 years. When does experience become stagnation? Or, to put it differently: Why are you still the right person for this task?
Thank God, I am a parliamentarian in a parliamentary democracy. And Berlin is different from other federal states: here, parliament still decides. Here, in the legislature, is the heart of democracy; this is where things are shaped. The landmark decision to change property policy and no longer allow sales to the highest bidder was made in parliament. The decision to buy back the water utilities because we did not want them to remain in private hands was also made there.
You say that in Berlin, decisions are still made in parliament. Where, in your view, is that no longer the case? Parliaments are, by definition, the place where political decisions are made.
Certainly. In many federal states, however, the key course is set from within the governments. In Berlin, by contrast, parliament is where the music plays; we have launched many initiatives from here, such as the rent register. That is not a scramble between the Senate and parliament, but the basic structure on which our democracy rests. We make decisions where the people sit who were elected and who represent this society.
When I started in parliament, there was a veritable sales policy. Public property was being sold off. I put a stop to that – even against resistance within my own parliamentary group. The then BIH was also supposed to be sold off that way. Today it is called Berlinovo, has a value of at least six billion euros, and remains in state hands. Today everyone says: Good that we have it.
About the person: Raed Saleh was born in the West Bank and came to Berlin with his family at the age of five. After starting medical school, he worked his way up to management at Burger King and later founded an online printing company. He has sat in the Berlin House of Representatives for the SPD since 2006, and has been chairman of the SPD parliamentary group since 2011. From 2020 to 2024, he was also co-state chairman of the Berlin SPD.
You didn't answer the actual question. So once again: When does long-standing experience become political stagnation?
Politics is work, and I very much enjoy doing this work because it offers the opportunity to shape things and to exert influence through legislation and thus do good. With the power of parliament, we have campaigned for a minimum wage higher than the federal one, and for the abolition of fixed-term contracts without objective reasons. The core question that occupies me is the question of distribution: Are wealth and assets justly distributed? Is what is happening fair?
Education has been one of your political priorities for years. The CDU now demands that financially well-off parents should in future pay two euros themselves for their children's school lunches. The reasoning: state support should concentrate more strongly on those who really need it. Why does the SPD reject this approach?
Freedom from fees is often misunderstood as "free." In fact, it relieves those who work and want to make ends meet for themselves and their families. I want politics to ensure that people can live on what they earn. That is why the SPD in Berlin has gradually enforced freedom from fees, so that families are not charged – for school meals, for the student ticket, for day care. For example, a Berlin family consisting of a policewoman and a baker's shop assistant with two children is relieved by several hundred euros a month.
If Finance Senator Evers now wants to charge families again through the back door, that is deeply hostile to families and hits exactly those who work hard, for example in shift work. That is an attack on our middle class – and it endangers Berlin as a business location. It will not happen with me.
Why should all parents benefit, including those who can easily afford the lunch?
Making classifications about who can afford school meals and who cannot would be a bureaucratic losing proposition: Those who are suffering most from the crises do not get a cent from the state. And the super-rich – I want to get them through taxes. And on that point, Evers is a coward. I suggest to the finance senator: Join me in a Bundesrat initiative for a real excess profits tax. Because every crisis produces losers, but always also winners, since the money is only redistributed, and hardly anyone dares to touch that.
What do you understand by an excess profits tax, and who exactly would it hit?
In the crises of recent years, some corporations took advantage of windfall effects: prices were not raised by the actual increased costs, but significantly beyond that. Food prices have risen by around 36 percent in a few years – for 100 euros you get significantly less in your shopping basket at the supermarket today. At the same time, prices rose sharply for housing and energy. An excess profits tax makes the winners of the crisis share in the costs of the crisis.
You have just spoken at length about social justice, redistribution, and relief. Nevertheless, a few months before the House of Representatives election, the Berlin SPD is clearly behind the CDU in the polls, and nationwide the SPD is only in the low double digits. Why is your core message apparently not getting through to voters?
Many people no longer trust the SPD, precisely because of developments at the federal level. When I am out and about in Berlin, I am often asked about federal issues: How can you allow such decisions to be made in the pension system? What does the development in the health sector mean for me? That overrides everything we do here. And I have to say: the criticism on the street is right and justified in many places.
I ask the question: Where, dear Lars Klingbeil, is the promised reform that deserves this name, that ensures more justice? I do not see it so far. Now there is discussion about making the big players pay – but that should have happened at the negotiating table with Chancellor Friedrich Merz beforehand, not afterwards. Likewise the promised opening clause in tenancy law: It should have been: no coalition decision without an opening clause.
Speaking of housing policy: In Berlin, the gap between existing rents and re-letting rents has now widened further than anywhere else. While existing rents average a good seven euros per square meter, new rentals often demand more than 15 euros. The SPD has co-governed Berlin for many years. What went wrong?
No other state has counteracted as much as we have in recent years – with every instrument we have, right down to the rent register. Many metropolises are now looking at what we are doing in Berlin: Through the SPD parliamentary group, we already have a ban on misappropriation, the Berlin model, the ban on converting living space into owner-occupied property. Wherever we had influence, we always created facts through legislation. What we lack is the federal opening clause for a rent freeze.
A central project of your party is the planned rent register. In future, around 1.8 million tenancies are to be recorded and any anomalies automatically reported to the authorities. When will the register come, and what costs do you expect?
We need a lead time; the digital rent register will be introduced gradually. But the direction is clear: If rents are overpriced by more than 50 percent, that is rent usury – and it must be prosecuted. We want a social market economy in the spirit of Ludwig Erhard. The state has the task of intervening in a regulatory capacity. And the mere announcement of the rent register is already having an effect.
The Left Party calls for so-called socialization, or expropriation, under Article 15 of the Basic Law. You, on the other hand, speak of a federal state opening clause. Why is that the better approach in your view?
I am personally glad that Article 15 of the Basic Law exists – as an option, as leverage. But I am against the expropriation of housing stock in Berlin: billions upon billions in costs, no planning security, not a single new home.
However, I do think it is wrong that the federal government has agreed to generally exclude expropriations in the states instead of giving us an opening clause. Returns of 17 percent for the wealthy in the housing market are not fair. Profits of four percent are also feasible and completely sufficient. Yes, that means intervening in an existing market. That is precisely the task of the state.
The Court of Auditors says Berlin is living beyond its means and that the previous course is "wrong." Nevertheless, the SPD promises free day care, free school meals, the student ticket, and further social benefits. Is that still financially serious?
I would turn the question around: Where are we investing so that this city emerges strengthened from the crisis? In the science locations such as Adlershof and Buch, in the settlement of companies, in language courses so that women with a migration background can go to work. And in families. What was wrong was that the CDU cut culture to the bone. The affordable city is an achievement of recent years – I will not give it up.
Anyone following your answers could sometimes imagine they were in an interview with the Left Party. In what way does the Berlin SPD actually still differ fundamentally from the Left?
We have already talked about that: I do not want expropriation. The SPD stands for the triad of social justice, economic reason, and security. In Berlin we have one of the toughest security laws, and if you ask me, with quite a few cameras – they are there for the victims, not for the perpetrators. We must take the perspective of the victims, not the perspective of the perpetrators. And I want to strengthen the backs of those who protect us all: police, rescue services, and others.
Your political positions appear somewhat contradictory: in housing and education policy, you take rather left-wing positions; in domestic and security policy, by contrast, clearly more restrictive ones. How does that fit together?
Social democracy is a left-wing people's party. I say: security is a core task of left-wing politics. To be there for those who depend on a strong state. For the waitress who has to take the train home from work at night. For the women and men who work in hospitals on the outskirts of the city and, as single parents, have to bring their child to school the next morning.
An electronic ankle bracelet for violent offenders is not right-wing – it is victim protection. And again: social justice and the economy belong together. I want simpler contract awards for companies, and I want contract compliance for employees. And anyone who wants to build here must build a portion affordably for people on normal incomes.
Why does politics then constantly lose itself in the debate about who is left and who is conservative instead of solving problems?
Citizens are rightly critical of that. In these polarizing times, they long for sensible politics, for balance, and also for compromise. Thinking economic and social policy together was always the recipe for success of social democracy.
According to the latest polls, it is quite conceivable that after the election the SPD would only be a junior partner in a government led by the Left. Would red-red-green under a Left governing mayor be an option for you?
I am fighting for a strong Social Democracy, and we are doing everything we can to ensure that Steffen Krach becomes Governing Mayor and moves into the Red Town Hall. Between us and the Left there are only five percentage points according to the current polls – and we will close that gap. Think of the Saarland, of Brandenburg, currently of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: there is still a lot in it. What matters is the trust and the vote of Berliners.
You chaired the Enquete Commission on "Social Cohesion, Democracy, and Diversity." The final report contains numerous recommendations. Which of them should, in your view, be implemented first, and why?
The commission's task was to develop recommendations and proposals, detached from day-to-day politics, together with experts, on how social differences can be overcome. Concretely, I would be pleased if the intercultural opening of the authorities were implemented soon, so that our administration truly reflects society with regard to women, people with disabilities, and people with a migration history.
Furthermore, the commission's work made clear once again: we must protect our democracy. The freedom to live self-determinedly in community in acceptance of different ways of life was hard-won. But this openness is being attacked from various directions by the enemies of our democracy, most recently from the Islamist milieu. We all painfully experienced that with the Islamist attack on the CSD last week.
Anyone who despises or attacks other people leaves the foundation of the Basic Law and is an opponent of us all; that applies to all extremes. My aspiration in the commission was to do politics for those who come after us, because we must remain vigilant so that history does not repeat itself.
You often draw parallels between the political present and the Weimar Republic. Is the situation in 2026 really comparable to the 1930s?
In the end, words become deeds. Just as right-wing populists are already musing about how to deal with children with disabilities, they babble about "real Germans" and "passport Germans," they declare people from civil society to be enemies of the state. Folks, there it is in black and white.
The Basic Law states: Human dignity shall be inviolable. It does not say: the dignity of the man, not the dignity of the heterosexual, not the dignity of the person without disability, and not even the dignity of the German. Organizations or parties that deny entire groups of people the right to belong leave the foundation of our constitution.
The Basic Law gives us the mandate to protect our democracy. Just as important is the second mandate: to translate the constitution into people's lives. We have to go to the pubs, to the companies, to the gyms, to where the people are. Or you stand on the street with a sign that says: "Need to talk? Let's talk." No fixed agenda, just listen. That's what I do in my constituency.
Let's talk about the Berlin state association: Martin Hikel was district mayor of Neukölln for years, did not stand again for the office, and shortly afterwards resigned as state SPD chairman together with Nicola Böcker-Giannini. Among the reasons he cited was the lack of support within his own party. He told the Berliner Zeitung that parts of the SPD had "fallen for the arguments of Islamists." At the same time, there was repeated talk that his clear stance against Islamism and anti-Semitism had not exactly won him friends within the party. The journalist Güner Balcı said after his withdrawal: "A small left wing systematically fought Martin Hikel for years." Has the Berlin SPD lost a politician because he named problems too clearly?
There is no place for Islamism and anti-Semitism in the SPD or in society. Every attack, no matter from which extremist direction, is clearly named. We will not be intimidated, and we will not let our peaceful and free society be destroyed. All parties must therefore do everything to ensure that Islamism, anti-Semitism, right-wing extremism, anti-Muslim racism, and discrimination of any kind have no place. Berlin, with our history and responsibility, must live up to that.
In 2015, you called for a German Leitkultur and later even published a book with the title "I am German – The New Leitkultur." Today, your party no longer uses this term at all. Have you or the SPD changed your mind?
The term also served at the time to set ourselves apart from Friedrich Merz's conservative Leitkultur debate. Today I would rather speak of a common denominator: the Basic Law as the foundation behind which we all gather. This country is my home, my homeland.
I want this country, into which my parents came as guest workers and in which my children were born, to remain a strong country.
