Der Rechtsanspruch auf einen Freiwilligendienst

60 years of the Voluntary Social Year (FSJ) also means 60 years of funding in project mode, which is primarily characterised by a time limit. What this means became clear in autumn 2023: the draft federal budget for 2024 envisaged a reduction in funding for the FSJ and other volunteer services of 113 million euros over the next two years. This corresponded to a cut of around a third of the budget for voluntary services. As a result, many organisations feared this huge budget cut and calculated that 25,000 to 30,000 of the approximately 100,000 volunteer positions were at risk. Not least with the help of a large-scale campaign “Don’t cut us” and a petition to the Bundestag, it was possible to avert the cuts for the 2024 financial year at the last minute. However, the process made it painfully clear that the funding of voluntary services, which is decided on politically every year as part of budget negotiations, is based on a tenous foundation. What does this have to do with a legal entitlement to do a volunteer service? This would not have happened with a legal entitlement, because: The federal government finances large parts of the voluntary services mentioned above. If there were a law that stipulated that every agreement on voluntary service made between a voluntary service organisation and a young person would also be financially supported, this would not have happened.