In the interview, Cem Özdemir reflects on the state of democratic societies. He holds that Germany is stable enough to go beyond the representative democracy. According to him, the introduction of referenda and other tools of direct democracy would be instrumental, exemplifying his hypothesis with the case of Switzerland.
Swiss local budgets are very balanced due to fiscal referenda. Furthermore, Özdemir discusses the way political parties choose their elites. He proposes to lower the right to vote down to 16 and he is very much in favour of the idea of cumulative voting (kumulieren) and split voting (panaschieren).
Constituents on the local level of some German Länder are already entitled to vote that way.

Derived from his experience as a Member of European Parliament, he strongly advocates the idea of having a European-style rapporteur for the committees in parliament. As Özdemir points out, it helps overcoming the traditional logic of government and opposition and boosts quality of parliamentary work, although he admits that it works best in presidential systems.