(Gemini Audio)
(de-news.net) – The German Association of Cities and Municipalities has reiterated its call for substantially increased funding for initiatives aimed at countering the growing prevalence of social isolation, arguing that fiscal constraints should not be permitted to impede a challenge with such far-reaching societal implications. Its chief executive, André Berghegger, proposed the establishment of a dedicated fund of roughly 500 million euros for the current legislative term, framing it as an essential financial instrument for coordinated national action. He noted that this fund could plausibly be supported through a mixture of European Union allocations, unspent appropriations in the federal budget, or targeted reallocations within individual ministries—mechanisms that, in his view, would allow the federal and state governments to act without significantly expanding overall public expenditure.
Warning that the country risked entering what he termed a “decade of loneliness,” Berghegger contended that voluntary work, while indispensable for the social fabric, was not capable of filling the systemic gaps that had emerged as a result of demographic change, resource shortages, and shifting patterns of social life. In addition to strengthened municipal budgets, he called for an integrated federal-state strategy to confront social isolation in a coordinated manner. The proposed fund, he argued, would serve as the backbone of this strategy by enabling the creation of durable support structures, ensuring predictable opening hours for community institutions, and promoting a model in which professional staff work in tandem with volunteers to provide outreach, guidance, and social engagement opportunities.
The municipal leader maintained that communities represented both the frontline settings in which the effects of loneliness were first detected and the environments in which countermeasures were most likely to have sustainable impact. Public libraries and adult-education centers, he argued, functioned as vital civic infrastructures that enable low-threshold social interaction, cultural participation, and informal community support. For these institutions to fulfill that role, Berghegger explained, they would need to remain reliably open and adequately staffed, avoiding prolonged closures or disruptions. Moreover, he emphasized that loneliness had evolved well beyond a demographic issue traditionally associated with older adults. Rather, it had become a cross-generational phenomenon affecting young people, working-age adults, and seniors alike.
Berghegger attributed the rise in loneliness to a confluence of mutually reinforcing dynamics, including increased dependence on digital communication at the expense of face-to-face interaction, sustained economic pressures that limit household resources and mobility, and broader geopolitical instabilities that heighten social anxiety and undermine community cohesion. Because these developments generate not only substantial personal distress but also the risk of societal alienation and, in extreme cases, political radicalization, he argued that policymakers would need to respond with urgency and strategic clarity. As an overarching part of this response, he urged local governments to conceive of themselves as caring communities capable of ensuring regular opportunities for social contact, civic participation, and accessible advisory services—elements that, in his view, were essential for counteracting an increasingly pervasive sense of disconnection.
