Saxony-Anhalt | The admonishers and their legacy: Ramelow, Haseloff and the audacity of self-forgetfulness

Two men, almost 25 years of government responsibility, bloated state budgets – and now they're warning of democratic erosion. A textbook example of political self-awareness.

There are interviews one simply must read because they are symptomatic—not of what is said, but of what remains unsaid. Bodo Ramelow, who served as Minister-President of Thuringia for ten years, and Reiner Haseloff, who led Saxony-Anhalt for almost 15 years, appeared together in public and delivered a conversation that, at first glance, seemed like a display of thoughtful statesmanship. Morning rituals, crisis management, the danger posed by the AfD. And then this sentence, which hangs over everything like a well-intentioned warning finger: Anyone who votes for the AfD shouldn't complain when democratic standards erode.

One might consider this statement wise. Or one might consider it what it actually is upon closer examination: a fundamental confusion of cause and effect, presented by two men who themselves played a significant role in creating the very causes. For Ramelow and Haseloff were not mere observers of German state failure. They were its protagonists – responsible for two of Germany's structurally weakest federal states, responsible for budgets in which personnel costs and pension obligations grew year after year, while administrative reforms and digitalization initiatives fell by the wayside.

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• SPIEGEL: "Those who vote for the AfD shouldn't complain when democratic standards erode" (Paywall)

To understand why this interview fits so perfectly into the context of the current debate about the growing German civil service, one needs to know the figures. And they are not flattering.

Ten years of Ramelow: Thuringia between growth and gasping for breath

Bodo Ramelow took office as Minister-President of Thuringia in December 2014 – the first politician from the Left Party to head a German state. He governed for ten years, initially in a red-red-green coalition, and later in various other coalitions. What he leaves behind is a state with a serious budget problem, which he, his team, and his predecessors jointly created.

As of June 30, 2024, Thuringia employed 106,105 people in its public sector – 1,130 more than a year earlier, an increase of 1.1 percent. The municipal sector saw an increase of 415 people to 40,475 employees, while the state sector grew by 690 to 65,170. These figures may initially seem small – until one considers the demographic context: Thuringia is shrinking. The population is declining, the number of students is decreasing in the long term, and yet the state apparatus is expanding. This is not natural growth in response to increasing responsibilities. This is institutional inertia.

The real problem, however, lies in pension costs. Thuringia has made hardly any financial provisions for the rapidly increasing civil servant pensions – this is the conclusion of the Thuringian Court of Auditors, which supports this assessment with alarming figures: In 2015, the state's pension expenditures amounted to around €136 million. By 2024, this figure had already reached approximately €450 million – a tripling in ten years. And that's not the end of it. Forecasts from the Thuringian Ministry of Finance predict that annual pension expenditures will increase to around €1.2 billion by the end of the 2030s. This represents another tripling – this time from 2024 to 2039.

Thuringia's current Finance Minister, Katja Wolf, stated for the record that she briefly gasped for breath when she saw the projected pension liabilities. That's an honest statement. It's less honest, however, if it's not added that these figures didn't come out of nowhere. They are the inevitable result of a policy of increasing civil servant status that has been pursued in Thuringia since the 2000s and was not corrected under Ramelow, but rather continued.

As early as 2013, even before Ramelow took office, calculations had been made in the Thuringian state parliament that the number of pension recipients would rise from around 4,600 in 2012 to an estimated 22,000 in 2032 – with correspondingly exploding pension expenditures. This forecast was well-known. The necessary consequence – namely, a decisive limitation on new civil service appointments and the establishment of sufficient pension reserves – has largely failed to materialize. The Thuringian Court of Auditors concludes that the state's pension provisions are "extremely low" compared to the foreseeable obligations.

According to the Thuringian Civil Servants' Association, the 2025 budget – passed under Ramelow's predecessor government – ​​contained a €150 million shortfall in personnel costs alone. The Thuringian Court of Auditors spoke of a systematic underestimation of personnel costs, meaning that the budget didn't even accurately reflect the actual costs, let alone make sufficient provisions for the future.

This is the fiscal record of ten years of Ramelow. And now this man warns that democratic standards could erode if the population votes for the AfD.

Haseloff's legacy: record budget, debt brake tricks and a third for personnel

Reiner Haseloff governed Saxony-Anhalt from 2011 to 2026 – almost 15 years, longer than any other sitting state premier in Germany. He is considered an experienced leader, a pragmatic conservative, a man who knows his state. That's not wrong. But it's only half the story.

Under Haseloff's government, the state's spending increased year after year. The draft budget for 2024 totaled €14.7 billion – roughly €2 billion more than in the 2022 budget. Nearly a third of total state spending, namely €4.5 billion, was allocated to personnel costs alone. This enormous increase was primarily due not to new positions, but to negotiated pay raises – but that doesn't change the fundamental structure: A state that spends almost 33 percent of its budget on personnel has little room for investment, digitalization, or infrastructure.

The State Audit Office of Saxony-Anhalt openly described the 2024 draft budget as a "sham balance" that the government achieved through a constitutionally questionable budgetary trick involving a global spending reduction of €432 million – a process unprecedented in Germany, according to the audit office's research. No one knows where these €432 million are supposed to be saved. An extraordinary budgetary situation was once again declared for 2024 to justify spending despite the debt brake.

Haseloff himself had publicly admitted that the days of peace and prosperity were over and that Germany was in an exceptional situation. He called on the federal government to declare a budget emergency, implement a comprehensive economic program, and cut taxes. That sounds like a diagnosis. What he didn't mention was that his own country had suspended the debt brake during the same period, concealed budget shortfalls through legal loopholes, and continued to hire teachers and police officers despite an official hiring freeze because these professions are politically sacrosanct.

Particularly revealing is what Haseloff's own CDU parliamentary group leader publicly admitted: a major administrative reform is not feasible during this legislative period. It's a task for a decade. The man who says this sits in a parliament that has been in power for years – and is postponing the necessary reform to the next generation. That's not a will to reform. That's institutional complacency with a long lead time.

The pension time bomb: What both countries are leaving their successors

What Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt have in common is a unique demographic situation: Both states only began appointing civil servants to a significant extent in the mid-1990s, after reunification. This means that the first complete generation of civil servants in these states will not retire until the 2030s. The wave of retirements that other western German states have already experienced is still to come in eastern Germany.

In Thuringia, the number of pensioners is projected to rise from just under 16,000 in 2024 to around 28,500 by 2039. The State Audit Office anticipates an annual increase in pension expenditures of approximately ten percent – ​​including salary adjustments. This is a figure that should alarm any serious financial planner: ten percent growth per year on an already significantly increased starting point.

The situation in Saxony-Anhalt is no better. The number of pensioners in the municipalities rose by 3.0 percent in 2025. The state was already operating at the structural limits of its budgetary capacity. Whoever succeeds Haseloff will inherit not only a state with high personnel costs, but also a pension obligation that will grow exponentially over the next 15 years.

In this context, it is noteworthy what Ramelow publicly complained about in 2017 – right in the middle of his term in office: the excessive service obligations of public broadcasting corporations, which he deemed no longer acceptable because they had diverged significantly from the service obligations of the public sector. This is a legitimate criticism. But it raises the question of why Ramelow did not address the analogous problem within his own state apparatus with the same vigor.

Only 17 percent trust the state: The real problem with the AfD

Anyone who takes Ramelow and Haseloff's statement seriously—that AfD voters shouldn't complain when democratic standards erode—must first listen to the citizens. And what they have to say is devastating.

A 2025 survey of German citizens by the German Civil Service Federation (DBB) reveals a shocking result: only 23 percent of Germans believe the public service is capable of acting effectively and fulfilling its duties. Three out of four Germans – precisely 73 percent – ​​consider the state overwhelmed, marking a new historic low. In previous years, this figure ranged between 66 and 70 percent. The picture is even more dramatic in East Germany: only 17 percent of East Germans believe the state is capable of fulfilling its responsibilities.

This figure deserves our utmost attention. Not because it's surprising, but because it so precisely describes the failure behind the AfD's rise. People who have witnessed for years that a growing state apparatus doesn't become faster, better, or more efficient; that public administrations are less digitally equipped than the average online company; that pensions are rising while their own statutory pension is under constant pressure to justify itself – these people aren't crazy. They're drawing a logical conclusion from observable reality.

In Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD is polling at around 40 percent. A survey from 2026 shows that 53 percent of Germans already expect the AfD to provide at least one state premier after upcoming state elections. This is no longer a fringe phenomenon. This is a profound shock to the political system – and its roots lie deep in the failures of those in power.

Nearly half of East Germans – 49 percent – ​​are dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy in Germany. 28 percent share populist views, almost twice as many as in the West. One in four East Germans is open to an authoritarian state. And the Germany Monitor 2025 confirms: In East Germany, dissatisfaction with democracy is strongly linked to the local economic and institutional situation – not to abstract ideological convictions.

This means that the dissatisfaction has identifiable, structural causes. Among these is – not exclusively, but significantly – the experience that an expensive, growing state apparatus does not live up to its promises.

The elite change that never happened: Structural failure as system logic

What unites Ramelow and Haseloff is more than just their shared term in office. It is the shared political logic of a generation of leaders who understood the state apparatus as an instrument of stabilization—as a way to secure employment, reward loyalty, and avoid political conflict. Civil service appointments don't create enemies. Pension reform creates enemies. Administrative cutbacks create enemies. The political economy of German federalism rewards expansion and punishes reduction—and both men operated within this logic.

Haseloff himself offered the sharpest self-diagnosis when he explained that the mechanisms of democracy had become too complex to allow for rapid responses in crisis situations. If politics can no longer make the system appear capable of action, the doubt shifts from whether the wrong people are in the right system to whether the system itself is still efficient. This is an analytically precise observation. But it also applies to him personally.

For what has Haseloff done in almost 15 years at the helm of Saxony-Anhalt to halt this loss of confidence? He has passed a record budget using constitutionally questionable tricks. He has systematically suspended the debt brake. He has postponed administrative reforms indefinitely. He has not stopped the increase in personnel despite demographic decline. This is not the failure of a single decision – it is the consistent continuation of an administrative logic that prioritizes short-term political stability over long-term fiscal sustainability.

Ramelow, who comes from a left-wing political tradition and views the welfare state as an achievement, has pursued a personnel policy in Thuringia that is demographically unsustainable. He has burdened the budget with pension obligations that his successors will have to pay. And he—like Haseloff—has failed to undertake any structural reform of civil service law, even though the foreseeable costs have been known for years. Thuringia's Finance Minister Wolf publicly stated in 2025 that she intended to reduce staff by 0.5 percent annually to reflect the declining population. This sounds reasonable—but it is a reaction to a situation that could have been prevented ten years earlier.

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The digitalization lie: Growth instead of productivity

Anyone discussing the growing civil service in Germany must also discuss digitalization – or more precisely, the failure to digitalize. For years, the political class touted digitalization as a panacea, promising greater efficiency with fewer staff. The reality is quite different.

The eGovernment Monitor 2024 reveals that only 19 percent of German citizens are convinced that public authorities and agencies operate as efficiently as businesses. Seven out of ten expect digital administrative services to be as convenient and easy to use as private online services – but the actual usage rate of online government services falls far short of this expectation. Despite significant expenditures, Germany ranks in the lower middle of the pack in European e-government comparisons.

The crucial point is this: growth in the public sector and investments in digitalization are not mutually exclusive in Germany – but they also don't complement each other as promised by politicians. Instead of using digitalization to save jobs and streamline administrative processes, digital systems were often introduced in addition to existing analog structures. The result is a system with both more personnel and higher IT expenditures – without delivering the hoped-for leap in productivity.

Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt are not alone in this. But they are particularly exposed because, as economically weaker states, they can afford such a loss of efficiency less than, for example, Bavaria or Baden-Württemberg. When a fifth of the state budget is spent on personnel and, at the same time, digital administrative services fall short of expectations, this is not an abstract statistical problem. This is a direct impairment of the quality of life for citizens.

The problem of democracy is a problem of state efficiency

Ramelow and Haseloff's statement – ​​"Those who vote for the AfD shouldn't complain when democratic standards erode" – contains an implicit causality: as if voting behavior had an effect on the erosion of democratic standards. This is a reversal of actual logic. It is not people's voting behavior that threatens democracy; democracy is threatened by the loss of trust in state institutions, and this loss of trust has concrete causes for which Haseloff and Ramellow share responsibility.

73 percent of German citizens believe the state is overwhelmed. This is not an irrational feeling. It is the result of systematic observation: decades of growing budgets without any discernible improvement in the state's ability to provide services; pension obligations that weigh like a silent mortgage on the future of young people; public administrations that promote digitalization but remain stuck in analog processes; politicians who announce reforms and then postpone them.

The research is unequivocal on this point: In East Germany, dissatisfaction with democracy is significantly linked to the local economic and institutional situation. This means that the high AfD approval ratings in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt are not a cultural phenomenon that can be combated with moral appeals. They are the political expression of a population that experiences the state as becoming more expensive without improving its services.

Populism doesn't arise in a vacuum. It arises where the gap between a state's aspirations and its reality is particularly wide. And this gap is especially significant in countries that are experiencing demographic decline, fiscal overstretch, and have postponed structural reforms for decades. So when Ramelow and Haseloff warn that democratic standards could erode, they are addressing a problem to which they themselves have contributed.

Election campaign in statesman's disguise: Whose interests are actually being served here?

Despite all the justified criticism of the interview's content, one shouldn't forget to consider the timing. And it's anything but coincidental. The state election in Saxony-Anhalt takes place on September 6, 2026 – and Reiner Haseloff, as the incumbent Minister-President, remains in office until election day, before handing the reins to his hand-picked successor, Sven Schulze. Schulze, Minister of Economic Affairs and CDU state party chairman, is to lead the CDU in an election campaign that the party itself internally considers difficult – a campaign without the incumbent's advantage, against a self-assured AfD. In this context, Haseloff's anti-AfD rhetoric isn't just civics lesson – it's the most important contribution a departing head of government can make to his party colleague: framing an election as an existential democratic decision.

Haseloff himself played his card openly. He declared that if the CDU were not politically successful, the democratic future of the state would be very difficult. This is not a neutral description of the political situation – it is a campaign slogan. He portrays the CDU as the guarantor of democracy and the AfD as its threat. Haseloff's simultaneous emphasis on Schulze's clear demarcation from the AfD completes the picture: The interview is, to a significant extent, the overture to the election campaign of a successor who faces the most difficult task in the history of the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt.

Bodo Ramelow has been in opposition since autumn 2024. After ten years as Minister-President, he lost power to the so-called "blackberry coalition" of the CDU, BSW, and SPD under Mario Voigt. The man who now publicly warns of the dangers of the AfD alongside Haseloff is therefore no longer a sitting head of government, but a ousted politician whose party, The Left, has sunk into political irrelevance in Thuringia. Ramelow's participation in this interview thus has a different logic than Haseloff's: it's about the power to define the narrative and managing his legacy—the attempt to be remembered as an elder statesman of East German social democracy, not as the man whose term in office ended with a pension bombshell.

What unites them both is their strategic interest in a particular narrative: the AfD is the threat, and the Democrats who have governed so far—despite all their mistakes—were and are the lesser evil. This may not be entirely factually wrong. But it isn't the whole truth either. It's the truth that's currently useful in terms of election politics. An interview that conveys this message isn't automatically dishonest—but it's also not an impartial contribution to democratic discourse. It's electioneering disguised as statesmanship, and it should be read as such.

The real irony is that the state election in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, 2026, was the first available stress test of this strategy. The result: The CDU won – and ultimately finished around 16 percentage points ahead of the AfD. That sounds like a success. But it also shows that, despite everything, the population regained trust in the established parties – not because of the moral appeals of the departing members, but because the new candidate, Schulze, ran with the fresh promise of change. The warnings about the AfD, therefore, functioned more as a tactical mobilization tool than as an honest assessment of the party's own record in government.

Those who warn should first look in the mirror

It is important to maintain a nuanced perspective here. Neither Ramelow nor Haseloff governed with malicious intent. Both worked within a system whose incentive structures penalize reform and reward development. Both governed in federal states facing particular demographic, economic, and structural challenges stemming from Germany's history of division. And both—it must be said in fairness—did indeed deliver sound administrative work in some areas.

But criticism of the system is not a personal accusation. It is the sober observation that two experienced politicians, who together have held government responsibility for almost a quarter of a century, are now pointing to democratic erosion without even beginning to address the extent to which their own actions have contributed to this erosion. This is not only intellectual dishonesty—it is also politically counterproductive. For those who criticize the population for their voting decisions without acknowledging their own complicity in the circumstances that led to those decisions will not win back a single vote.

The people of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt know how their state has been governed. They experience daily the consequences of a fiscal policy that has accumulated personnel costs and pension obligations while neglecting roads, school buildings, and digital administrative infrastructure. When these people then give their vote to a party that says the system must be fundamentally changed – that is not contempt for democracy. It is a political consequence that can be lamented, but whose causes must be identified.

The bloated state as a problem for democracy – a synthesis

The real link between the article about the bloated state and the Ramelow-Haseloff interview is this: A state that grows continuously without becoming more efficient; that accumulates pension liabilities without building up sufficient reserves; that promises digitalization while preserving analog structures; that conducts reform debates without implementing reforms – this state produces a loss of trust. And a loss of trust produces political extremism.

The €65.9 billion in pension costs nationwide each year, the 5.38 million public sector employees, the 1.96 million civil servants – these are not abstract statistics. These are the visible manifestations of a system that reproduces itself and, in doing so, consumes the resources that would be needed for genuine public service. And this bloated state was not created by anonymous forces. It was shaped by specific politicians, in specific federal states, over specific legislative periods.

Ramelow and Haseloff are part of this story. Their warning to the AfD would be more credible if they simultaneously admitted: We have made mistakes. We have allowed the state apparatus to grow without sufficient funding. We have postponed reforms that we should have tackled. We have squandered trust that will be difficult to regain. That would be honest. That would be politically courageous. And that would be the beginning of a debate that could truly move Germany forward.

Instead, they issue warnings from the outside, without accountability for the mess they left behind. That is the real tragedy of this interview – and it is representative of what is meant by the term "political establishment" when millions of people in Germany say they are tired of listening to the same faces with the same answers.

You don't have to vote for the AfD to understand this frustration. And you have to understand it to overcome it.