Today, it is not the CSU but its long-standing political rival, the Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP), that has decided to revisit that old promise. The party is launching a popular initiative whose outcome could determine whether Söder will be able to run for a third term as minister-president in 2028.
What the ÖDP is proposing
The party intends to legally limit the Bavarian minister-president’s time in office to two terms — a maximum of ten years. Notably, the bill will almost word-for-word repeat the text that Söder himself personally introduced in 2018, when he had just taken office as head of government.
The head of the party’s Bavarian branch, Agnes Becker, explained the logic behind the initiative to the news agency dpa as follows: democracy assumes that power is granted for a limited time, and she considers ten years — that is, two terms as minister-president — an entirely sufficient period.
According to the party, the goals of the initiative are to:
- restrain personal dominance at the top of state power;
- preserve the dignity of the office of minister-president;
- strengthen parliamentary oversight;
- give new impetus to Bavaria’s political life.
How Söder’s position has changed
In 2018, shortly after succeeding Horst Seehofer in office, Söder insisted on enshrining a ten-year limit, declaring that “power needs to be limited.” At the time, only the CSU faction supported the proposal, and passing a constitutional amendment required a two-thirds majority in the Landtag — that majority could not be secured, and the initiative quietly faded away.
By 2023, the politician’s position had noticeably shifted: he acknowledged that he might run again for minister-president after the 2028 election. It is precisely this inconsistency that the ÖDP intends to use in its campaign. Party chairman Tobias Ruff told the magazine Stern that the party will use all of Söder’s past statements, and that the bill will be carried over unchanged from 2018. According to him, term limits are an essential element for keeping democracy functional and for breaking up entrenched power structures.
The opposition Bavarian SPD also weighed in on the initiative. The chairman of the party’s regional branch, Sebastian Roloff, wryly called Söder the world champion of bold statements, noting that the minister-president had promised term limits eight years ago but never kept that promise.
How the popular initiative procedure works in Bavaria
Residents of Bavaria can initiate or amend state laws through two consecutive stages — a Volksbegehren (a petition drive to put the question to a vote) and a Volksentscheid (the referendum itself). The procedure works as follows:
- first, at least 25,000 citizens must sign an application to hold a popular initiative — no strict deadline is set for this;
- Bavaria’s Ministry of the Interior reviews the application and decides whether to admit it;
- once approved, ten percent of eligible voters must sign in support of the initiative within two weeks — this is usually done at municipal offices, most often town halls;
- if the required number of signatures is collected, the Landtag either adopts the initiative’s demand directly or rejects it;
- if parliament rejects it, a referendum is scheduled within three months, in which the decision is made by simple majority vote.
To amend the constitution itself, an additional condition applies: the initiative must be supported by at least a quarter of all eligible voters in the state, not merely of those who take part in the vote — a considerably higher bar than for passing ordinary state laws.
Signature collection for the initiative is due to begin as early as July and will continue throughout the summer, and according to party representatives, the signature lists have already been printed. The party plans to submit the collected signatures to the Ministry of the Interior no later than October.
The party’s past successes
The ÖDP has already achieved notable results through the mechanism of popular initiatives, which is why the CSU is taking the new campaign seriously. In 1998, such a campaign led to the abolition of the Bavarian Senate — the upper chamber of the state parliament. In 2010, the party succeeded in introducing a strict ban on smoking in public places in Bavaria — a decision that was considered politically risky at the time but was ultimately approved by voters.
The party describes its approach to such campaigns on its own website this way: even a small thumbtack can move a much larger body.
What this means for the 2028 election
Within the CSU, it has effectively already been decided that Söder will once again head the party’s list in the 2028 Landtag election — in the previous election, held in October 2023, the party won a decisive victory under his leadership. Whether the ÖDP’s initiative will affect his possible third bid for office remains unclear: the popular initiative procedure involves numerous deadlines and conditions, and even a successful outcome could stretch out implementation of the amendment for a long time.
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