Berlin's Left Party faces legal, political hurdles on housing expropriation promise

On September 20, Berlin voters handed the socialist Left Party a significant election victory, largely on the strength of a single promise: to finally implement what the city had already decided five years earlier. In 2021, 57.6 percent of Berliners had voted yes on a referendum asking whether the government should expropriate apartments owned by large real estate companies—those holding more than 3,000 units. The Left Party was the only major party on the ballot willing to carry that mandate forward. But within hours of the election result, the federal government made clear it would not allow it to happen.

The housing crisis in Berlin has become the city's defining political problem. Rents have climbed steadily, and surveys showed that housing costs dominated voter concerns in this election. The expropriation campaign, called "Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen"—named after the largest property developer involved—had spent years building grassroots support for a radical solution: take the apartments. Deutsche Wohnen alone owns 100,000 units in Berlin out of 140,000 across Germany. If the government seized the holdings of Deutsche Wohnen and a handful of similar firms, the campaign argued, it could bring roughly 240,000 to 270,000 apartments into public ownership and rent them at affordable rates. Currently, about 25 percent of Berlin's rental stock is already publicly owned through state companies like Berlinovo. Expropriation would push that share above 30 percent.

The 2021 referendum was not binding. Instead, the then-governing coalition—made up of the Social Democrats, Greens, and Left Party—appointed a 13-member expert commission to determine whether the plan was constitutional and how compensation could work. The commission included former justice ministers and constitutional scholars. In 2023, they concluded that expropriation was legally possible under Articles 14 and 15 of Germany's Basic Law. Article 14 permits expropriation for the public good. Article 15 goes further, allowing the state to transfer land and means of production to public ownership through legislation. But there was a catch: Article 15 had never actually been used in German history. It was untested legal territory.

Then the political ground shifted. In 2023, a new government took office led by the Christian Democratic Union and Chancellor Kai Wegner, who flatly rejected expropriation. The CDU announced it would draft a socialization law instead—one that would define conditions for public ownership but explicitly rule out seizure. A draft was completed in December 2025. The expropriation campaign dismissed this as meaningless and began preparing its own legal framework and a new referendum campaign to force the issue.

Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz responded to the Left Party's September election victory with immediate alarm. He promised to draft a federal law banning state governments from expropriating property at all. "It's not just about banning something here in Berlin," he said at a press conference. "It's about sending a clear message to international investors, which is: There is no expropriation of private property in Germany." But constitutional experts questioned whether the federal government actually has the power to impose such a ban. Germany's Constitutional Court has previously ruled that the federal government cannot simply pass a law to prevent a state from governing in areas under its authority.

The legal terrain is genuinely uncertain. While Article 14 expropriation happens regularly—for highways, for instance—Article 15 has never been tested in court. Some legal experts argue it would violate European law. Property companies would almost certainly sue, demanding compensation far higher than any government would offer. The Left Party itself acknowledges that even if expropriation were implemented, it would take years to execute and longer still to measurably affect Berlin's overall rent levels. In the meantime, the party is pursuing faster measures like rent caps.

The Left Party must now negotiate a coalition government, likely with the SPD and Greens. Expropriation could become a major point of friction in those talks, especially given federal opposition and the controversy surrounding the issue. And public support has already begun to erode. A recent poll found that only 37 percent of Berliners still favor expropriating real estate companies—a significant drop from the 57.6 percent who voted yes in 2021. The mandate that won the Left Party the election may not survive the process of trying to fulfill it.