Only if fewer people vote for the AfD will their foundation come to an end

Since entering the Bundestag, the AfD has been compulsively marginalized by the other parties: its draft laws have been categorically rejected despite overlapping content, and its candidates for Bundestag vice president and committee chair have not received a majority. Since the AfD can still play a sufficient role in forming political opinions in the Bundestag, the Federal Constitutional Court has not yet intervened.

The fact that the AfD-affiliated Desiderius-Erasmus-Foundation (DES), in contrast to the other party-affiliated foundations, does not receive any money from the budget goes too far, the second Senate has now made clear. Because this puts the AfD at a disadvantage in political competition with the other parties. Their affiliated foundations could generate many times more reach for their political convictions than the DES thanks to state grants in the millions.

Due to the importance for the democratic process and in order to create transparency, the Bundestag must now regulate the requirements for foundation funding in its own law. The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court reads pleasingly sober in view of the ideologically heated debate; the party program of the AfD played no role for the judges.

The other parties now have two options: They continue on their current course and try to continue to exclude the DES via a "constitutional clause" in the new foundation law. The DES itself, which has not yet been observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to prove hostility to the constitution, represents a high hurdle, even if extremist statements by AfD party officials and the classification of the AfD as a “suspected case” are used.

In addition, the other parties would then be forced to take a closer look at the parts of the Left Party observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution – and to justify why the situation of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation should differ from that of the DES. Another embarrassing defeat in Karlsruhe is imminent.

The alternative would be to focus only on the election results in the new foundation law and to involve the DES in the distribution of the funds. In view of various misanthropic and right-wing extremist statements by AfD politicians, it is understandable that many are concerned about what the DES could use the funds for.

However, the AfD is not yet a banned party and appeals to many voters. Instead of strengthening the AfD in its role as a martyr, the other parties and foundations should therefore think long-term and use their own funds to promote the free-democratic legal system and restore lost trust. If fewer people vote for the AfD, the DES will soon become redundant again.