Once a year, the Bundesrat invites students from the federal state currently holding the presidency to Berlin. In 2024, 120 young people from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania were invited, and in 2025, around 80 students from Saarland took on the roles of ministers from 16 federal states and journalists. We have completely redesigned the simulation game for the 2024 event and have since held it twice. Next year, we are looking forward to welcoming young people from Bremen! 

We developed the concept for the event from scratch. Especially for a simulation game about an institution as complex as the Bundesrat, we thought it was important to set didactic priorities, simplify in the right places and design the processes in a modular way so that the young people would remain interested and motivated over the two to three days. 

After an interactive ice-breaker, the necessary prior knowledge is conveyed through a pub quiz, in which the federal state delegations compete and are thus also formed as a team. It is important to us that not only institutional knowledge is imparted. So-called ‘skill workshops’ are integrated into the course of the simulation game, in which the participants are introduced to the basics of political practice and learn, for example, negotiation skills that they can use directly in the simulation game, but also beyond. The special roles such as state ministers and committee chairs receive separate briefings – just as they do in reality. 

One part of the group becomes the press team, which reports on the negotiations in the simulation game. To do this, our software Senaryon is used to publish short messages and more detailed reports, produce a filmed news programme and moderate a live talk show. 

As in real life, the majority of the substantive deliberations take place in the committees. At the end of the negotiations, the plenary sessions vote on the proposed legislation. In the two years, these included, for example, the introduction of a general compulsory service, anonymised job applications, and the question of whether non-physical sexual harassment should be punishable. 

In all cases, we were impressed by how objectively and respectfully the young people discussed these issues with each other. As one of the young people said in his role as committee chair: ‘Here, we have learned how important it is to approach each other and make compromises.’ That's right! And with that, there was thunderous applause, which is not really usual in the Bundesrat.