City Council meeting: How Leipzig is losing its funding for heat protection+Video

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The scorching summer of 2026 showed everyone in Leipzig where global warming is heading. And just how ill-prepared the city of Leipzig actually is for such high temperatures of around 40 degrees. Naturally, the Left Party group on Leipzig City Council wanted to know what the city was now investing in to protect against the heat. The Office for Environmental Protection did reply. But the real bombshell only became clear when Left Party councillor Susanne Scheidereiter pressed for further details.

This is because the administration had, once again, managed to conceal the real problem in its reply using evasive wording: “The Office for Environmental Protection had no funding that was not claimed solely due to a lack of own funds. This also applies to the Office for Schools.

However, the requirements for applying for funding are complex and must be considered in their entirety. In most funding programmes, the provision of own funds is a prerequisite for participation or for submitting an application. At the same time, the allocation of funds is planned primarily according to technical and substantive needs.”

That sounds as though everything is fine. After all, Leipzig even has an Emergency Climate Adaptation Programme (here are the figures for 2026 ), which allows the city to spend 1 million euros on climate protection in each of the tight budget years 2027 and 2028. At least, that’s the hope. Because ultimately, the State Directorate must also approve this. After all, even this frankly laughable sum – which will then be used to fund drinking fountains, shade structures in school playgrounds and tree planting – is not a mandatory responsibility of the city.

Heat protection is not a mandatory responsibility

This is also due, as Mayor Burkhard Jung noted, to the fact that the framers of the Basic Law in 1949 simply could not have imagined that heat protection would one day become a fundamental matter of survival for the residents of German cities.

And he also pointed out something that was not mentioned in the response from the Office for Environmental Protection: that the federal government has in fact made as much as 5 billion euros in funding available to local authorities for heat protection. However, Federal Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD) was also rather dismayed to discover that local authorities are hardly making use of these funds.

They are unable to do so, as Burkhard Jung points out. This is because, one after another, they find themselves in exactly the same situation as Leipzig: their budgets are deeply in the red. They simply cannot raise the necessary matching funds required for the grants, and so are unable to access the money. It is the same problem that Saxony’s Minister for Economic Affairs , Dirk Panter (SPD), has also highlighted regarding Saxony’s heat protection grants.

If you have no money, you don’t submit applications

And Jung made it quite clear, in essence, that this is why Leipzig isn’t even submitting any grant applications in the first place. And even if it wanted to, the State Directorate of Saxony would put a stop to it. This is because heat protection is not a mandatory duty of local authorities as defined by the Basic Law.

In plain language: In their financial distress, local authorities are not even allowed to point out that heat protection is essential for the survival of their residents. Heat protection is regarded as a voluntary task; from the supervisory authority’s perspective, it is therefore a kind of pretty feather in the cap, which must be deemed superfluous in the tightened budgets.

The questions raised by Dr Nicole Schreyer-Krieg and Marvin Frommhold (both Greens) really brought the dilemma into sharp focus and prompted Burkhard Jung to highlight the whole legal predicament. For it is quite obvious that even the 2021 ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court is not sufficient to make climate protection a mandatory duty in Germany. According to Jung, a proper amendment to the Basic Law would likely be required. The problem, however, is that this requires a two-thirds majority.

Heat protection on a shoestring

And for some time now, financial difficulties have meant that Leipzig has had to significantly scale back its heat protection initiatives. This is also reflected in Question 3 from the Left Party parliamentary group: “Will the staffing plan for the 2027/28 biennial budget specifically include posts for climate change adaptation or the implementation of the heat action plan?”

The opposite is the case, as Susanne Scheidereiter, who raised the question on behalf of The Left, was forced to learn: “No posts for climate change adaptation or the implementation of the heat action plan have been included in the 2027/28 staffing plan.”

This means, according to Heiko Rosenthal, the Mayor for the Environment, that the posts that were created are coming to an end and will be discontinued.

And what about the climate change adaptation programme promised by the city?

According to Rosenthal, this programme already exists and is currently undergoing internal administrative consultation. He hopes that a consensus can be reached between the departments and divisions on this matter. However, he also hinted that this consensus might not be reached. Perhaps because the city simply does not have the funds to go beyond the heat protection measures listed in the response to Die Linke. And so, at a time when annual temperatures are rising relentlessly and turning the city into a heat trap, Leipzig lacks the funds to take timely and effective countermeasures.