Tax millions for AfD-related foundation? "Do everything we can to prevent this"

The then Federal President Roman Herzog spoke in July 1998 about the "unifying bond between all political foundations". Political education should "advertise for democracy," he said at the time. The political foundations are "schools of democratic thought and action, training grounds for civil courage and community spirit".

The Desiderius-Erasmus-Foundation (DES), the party-affiliated foundation of the AfD, did not exist at that time. It was founded in 2016 and is the only foundation that is affiliated with a party represented in the Bundestag but is not funded by state funds. Because it is highly doubtful whether this "unifying bond" of campaigning for democracy between the political foundations still exists. As is well known, the AfD is observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a “right-wing extremist suspect”.

After years of litigation, the Federal Constitutional Court heard for the first time on Tuesday about the lack of state funding for the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation. The AfD sees their right to equal opportunities for the parties under Article 21 of the Basic Law and their right to equal treatment under Article 3 of the Basic Law violated.

In particular, the party relies on a 1986 judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court, which stated that the principle of equality requires state funding for party-affiliated foundations "to adequately take into account all permanent, important political trends".

The AfD is applying for additional funding for the 2018 and 2019 budget years after the party entered the Bundestag for the first time. Your lawyer Ulrich Vosgerau justified this on Tuesday with the federal structure of Germany as one of the principles of the Basic Law. "State elections should also be taken into account," he said.

Just a week ago, the AfD extended its lawsuit to include the non-consideration for the budget years 2020 to 2022. This year, a budget note was passed as part of the budget law, according to which party-affiliated foundations are only funded if they "offer the guarantee at all times". stand up for the constitution. Whether this is sufficient to exclude DES is highly questionable.

The first issue was the admissibility of the action. "The AfD relies on equal treatment to claim a special case for itself," said law professor Sophie Schönberger for the opponent in the Bundestag. No foundation has received state funds from the first legislative period of the party close to it. The motions are "obviously inadmissible" because the legislature is entitled to a prerogative of assessment, i.e. the prerogative to decide whether the constitutional court's stipulation of a "permanent basic current" is given.

So far, there has been no legal basis for state funding of political foundations, despite annual donations totaling hundreds of millions (most recently around 660 million euros). In the past few decades, a parliamentary practice has developed in which foundation representatives present their funding needs to the Ministry of the Interior and the budget politicians of the Bundestag in an informal part of the budget deliberations in the Bundestag and then negotiate the allocation. The extremely non-transparent and informal procedure has long been the subject of criticism.

The Ampel parties had agreed in the coalition agreement at the end of last year that the financing of the foundations should be "legally better secured". The Greens had already unsuccessfully proposed a foundation law in the last legislative period, and the FDP would also like to get it started. According to reports, however, the SPD is blocking the project. The Ampel partners suspect behind closed doors that this is due to the high funding for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which the Social Democrats did not want to jeopardize.

The SPD parliamentary group rejects this clearly. "The fact that the SPD is against a foundation law out of concern for the finances of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation is complete nonsense," said the parliamentary managing director, Johannes Fechner, WELT. "Rather, we want to prevent political foundations from receiving funds that pursue right-wing extremist and anti-democratic purposes."

Before a possible law on foundations can be passed, the crucial question must be clarified by the constitutional court: Is it possible to regulate a foundation from receiving tax money if it is close to a party that the constitutional protection has certified as having extremist tendencies? The SPD will “do everything to prevent the DES from receiving tax money”.

Green parliamentary group leader Konstantin von Notz considers a legal basis to be overdue. "Public funds must not be misused to work on the resolution of our democracy," he said. The development of a regulation agreed in the coalition agreement must “now happen immediately”. Stephan Thomae, parliamentary director of the FDP in the Bundestag, said: "We need clearer rules. In view of the lawsuit filed by the AfD, the Budget Act alone will no longer suffice.”

According to a study by the Otto-Brenner-Foundation from last year, DES actors “have repeatedly attracted attention with nationalist, historical revisionist, racist and anti-Semitic positions”. With funding in the millions, the DES could “try, with state support, to promote a cultural revolution from the right”.

The chairwoman of the foundation, Erika Steinbach (AfD), rejected the allegations in the hearing on Tuesday: "We are in no way conveying anti-democratic ideas," she said. It's about "conservative educational work". In fact, the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation is not mentioned in any federal or state intelligence reports.

The AfD lawyer Ulrich Vosgerau also refers to this: "No one has raised any suspicions against the foundation itself, it was never in the sights of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution," he told WELT. The deputy party leader of the AfD, Mariana Harder-Kühnel, said: "Even if we are illegally observed, we should get the money." The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is funded in this way, although three sub-organizations of the Left Party are observed.

Research by various media showed that the foundation's board of trustees had close ties to the Institute for State Policy (IfS), which is managed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected right-wing extremist. The chairman of the board of trustees is Karlheinz Weißmann, who co-founded the IfS. A member of the board of trustees is the constitutional lawyer Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider, co-founder of the association "One percent for our country", who is also being observed as a suspected case.

The oral hearing of the Federal Constitutional Court continued late Tuesday afternoon. A verdict is expected in about four months. It is quite possible that the constitutional court will instruct the legislature to legislate for foundation financing, for example within a period of two years. Should the DES then actually share equally in the state funding of the political foundations, it would be entitled to up to 70 million euros annually in the medium term.

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