Schwerin (dpa/mv) – International Women’s Day on March 8 will be a public holiday in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania from 2023 and will therefore be free of work. The state parliament changed the public holiday law on Wednesday with the votes of the government factions SPD and Left. The opposition Greens also agreed. The CDU, FDP and AfD voted against the change in the law. March 8th has so far – since 2019 – only been a public holiday in Berlin. Now MV is added as a second federal state.
The Union and the Liberals failed in an attempt to postpone the introduction of the new holiday to 2026. They cited economic reasons for doing so. The country is coming out of a pandemic and is already facing the next crisis in the form of the Ukraine war, politicians from both factions said in the debate. An additional day off comes at the wrong time.
FDP parliamentary group leader René Domke put the cost of a public holiday for the economy in MV at 58.5 million euros a year, citing calculations by the chambers of industry and commerce. The CDU politician Sebastian Ehlers said that the dealers in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein would be happy if the people from MV came to them to shop on the holiday.
Speakers from the SPD, Left and Greens made it clear that Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has fewer public holidays than other federal states. They also stressed that not all industries would suffer from an extra day off. Experience has shown that the hospitality industry benefits from this. The AfD doubted the point of making International Women’s Day a day of struggle and a holiday for women’s rights. Equality for women is already anchored in the Basic Law and in the state constitution.
