Abolition of tuition fees
In summer of 2011, the Freie Wähler in Bavaria launched a referendum for the abolition of general tuition fees for the first and subsequent Master's degree. The first obstacle to be admitted as a referendum was the collection of at least 25,000 signatures of citizens eligible to vote in Bavaria.
The signature lists were successfully transferred to the Ministry of the Interior in June 2012, which took over the formal examination of admissibility. According to the Bavarian Constitution, a referendum financed by the state is inadmissible. This was precisely what the Ministry of the Interior considered to be the case concerning the petition for a referendum against tuition fees. He argued that the tuition fees made up a not insignificant part of university funding and that more than 80% of them flowed into the state budget, as they were mainly used to finance employment relationships.
Not only the Ministry of Science but also the Bavarian Constitutional Court contradicted this statement in its judgement on October 22, 2012, in which the petition for a referendum was declared admissible, since the revenue from tuition fees flowed directly into the corporate budgets of the universities and thus did not affect the state budget. This meant that, for the first time, there was an opportunity to abolish tuition fees independently of the respective state government and as quickly as possible.
After the referendum was declared admissible, a broad alliance was formed at the national and local level to support the referendum. For the referendum to be successful, 10% of the population eligible to vote in Bavaria had to sign at the town halls of their primary residence within 14 days. With a signature, however, it was not yet confirmed to support the project of the petition for a referendum, but only that the Bavarian State Parliament should first decide on this issue and, if it is rejected, then the actual referendum could be held.
The alliance was made up of the three opposition parties of the Bavarian State Parliament, the Bavarian State Conference of Students (LAK), the German Federation of Trade Unions, other opposition parties not represented in the State Parliament, various church associations, youth associations and, at the local level, other alliance partners.
On the day after the judgement was announced, a controversial debate arose within the CSU, which had introduced tuition fees in 2007 with an absolute majority, about whether it would not be better to abolish tuition fees right away and not wait for the referendum. However, the FDP as coalition partner continued to vehemently support tuition fees, so that the upcoming referendum and tuition fees as such received media attention for weeks.
The Bavarian Student Representation in particular took advantage of this situation in the fall of 2012 to focus even more attention than usual on the issue among students and the general population through various campaigns.
Meanwhile, the CSU decided to oppose tuition fees from now on due to the changed situation, whereupon the governing coalition of CSU and FDP agreed that they could not reach an agreement and would first wait for the referendum before deciding how to proceed. At the end of November, the Ministry of the Interior finally set the period for the referendum from January 17 to 30, 2013.
In order to convince 10% of all eligible voters in Bavaria to sign for the referendum in the town halls, an enormous effort of all alliance partners throughout Bavaria was necessary over the entire registration period, especially since the CSU had announced that it wanted to abolish tuition fees after the state elections anyway.
In the end, 14.3% of all eligible voters across Bavaria signed up for the referendum, over 400,000 more signatures than needed, making it one of the most successful referendums in Bavarian history.
After the great success of the referendum, the State Parliament now had to decide whether it wanted to accept the referendum directly or whether there should be a referendum in which the Bavarian population could have voted on the abolition or retention of tuition fees in Bavaria. In the State Parliament itself, there was a broad majority in favor of abolition after the CSU's change of course, but the coalition agreement, which provided for the retention of tuition fees, initially prevented the CSU from voting in favor of the referendum together with the SPD, Freie Wähler and Grünen. In order to reach an agreement in the State Parliament, the leaders of the CSU and FDP negotiated a kind of compromise. The CSU was allowed to vote in favor of abolition in the State Parliament if an education financing law was passed at the same time, which, in addition to fully compensating for the elimination of tuition fees, also provided for investments in early childhood and school education, as well as an additional paragraph for debt repayment.
The National Party Congress of the FDP approved the negotiated compromise at the beginning of March, which meant that nothing prevented its abolition by the State Parliament.
On April 24, 2013, the State Parliament finally decided to abolish the general tuition funds with 124 votes in favor, 12 against, and 4 abstentions.