First Handover of the Transrapid Petition Completed
Addendum of June 29, 2025: ⚠️ It is important to note that ALL parliamentary groups in the Bundestag (German parliament) as well as ALL members of the Petitions Committee and the Transport Committee were contacted with a request for a handover, as can also be seen from the table in the first post.
💡 In addition to this first handover, a handover to an SPD member of parliament, the Bundestag Petitions Committee and the Federal Ministry of Transport is also planned, and, if there is interest, to further parliamentary groups and members.
➡️ magnetbahn.de, as a politically neutral platform, strictly rejects any accusations of partisan closeness and asks that people refrain from further hate messages and insults by email or social media.
✉️ I am happy to receive criticism, but would ask that it be addressed directly to the members of parliament who reject or ignore the petition despite 62,000 signatures. I will not accept having to throw this democratic petition success, after a year of signature collection and 5 years of activism, into the shredder out of political cowardice on the topic, nor accept the inaction of most parties, and I am pleased about the first handover to the AfD parliamentary group, also in the hope that other parties will follow.
On June 27, 2025, the first federal-level sign was given toward resuming the political debate about the Transrapid: members of the German Bundestag from the AfD parliamentary group, including representatives of the Transport and Petitions Committees, received a comprehensive petition package in Berlin. It contains a position paper, 61,926 signatures and almost 18,000 comments from citizens who support a future-proof high-speed technology.
The package, consisting of more than 1,000 pages, was presented to the members of parliament in a formal handover ceremony. The event was not intended to be exclusive to one party: beforehand, all parliamentary groups represented in the Bundestag as well as all members of the Transport and Petitions Committees, across party and group lines, were asked to take part in a handover. The response was sobering: While many did not respond at all or declined, only the AfD (besides a single SPD member of parliament) showed unanimous willingness to accept the petition with several members of parliament.
Manfred Schiller, petitions spokesman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, states:
“The AfD parliamentary group sees in the petition a clear signal that the population wants a return to our own technological strengths and an ideology-free transport policy. The Transrapid stands for German engineering, top speed and low-emission mobility. It is a mistake to leave such a future technology lying idle. The Transrapid is a German maglev developed for high-speed transport, and China is now the leader in maglev technology. China took the technology for it from the German Transrapid and developed it further. So that Germany does not become China’s workbench, the AfD parliamentary group is examining how this concern can be brought into parliamentary work.”
The petition was launched out of conviction on a politically neutral basis. The aim is not to serve a particular party, but to put the idea of an innovative, sustainable high-speed technology back into political awareness. In this spirit it is stressed: acceptance by AfD members of parliament does not signify ideological closeness, but expresses the fact that they were the only parliamentary group willing to engage with the issue across the entire group, with members from various committees.
Ignorance despite historical responsibility
The lack of response from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group is striking. Despite targeted requests, there was no feedback at all about the handover of the petition. This is particularly irritating in the case of Gitta Connemann, a CDU member of parliament from the constituency of the Transrapid Test Facility Emsland. In earlier years she had campaigned emphatically for the Transrapid. That there is now not even a reply to the request for a petition handover is more than disappointing.
Further handovers planned
This was only the first step. Further handovers are being prepared, including to the official Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag, to the Federal Ministry of Transport, and to SPD member of parliament Ruppert Stüwe, who has so far been the only member of a governing parliamentary group to signal willingness to accept the petition. In addition, there remains full willingness to hand the petition to further members of parliament and parliamentary groups, provided a response is received.
The broad public support shows that interest in a technology shift in high-speed transport is unbroken. All the more is political openness needed now, across party lines.
