extremism
Karlsruhe: NPD no longer receives money from the state
The NPD, now known as Die Heimat, is excluded from party funding. photo
© Stefan Sauer/dpa
The NPD – now Die Heimat – has not received any money for a few years now. That was because of the election results. Now Karlsruhe has made a further judgment.
The right-wing extremist NPD will be excluded from state party funding for six years. This was decided by the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. The The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) renamed itself Die Heimat last June. It was the first case of its kind at Germany’s highest court. The ruling is also likely to be discussed in relation to the AfD. (Ref. 2 BvB 1/19)
The legislature created the option to exclude funding after the second unsuccessful NPD ban procedure in 2017. The Constitutional Court rejected a ban at the time because there was no evidence that the party could achieve its anti-constitutional goals.
The legislature then created the possibility of exclusion from party financing. The Bundestag, Bundesrat and Federal Government applied to the Constitutional Court to exclude the NPD and possible replacement parties from party financing for six years. The period is specified by law. The ruling also means that tax benefits for the party and donations to it will no longer apply.
How party financing works
According to party law, parties can receive money from the state for their work – such as election campaigns. Other sources of income include membership fees and donations. The amount of partial state funding is calculated according to a specific key, with votes playing a role, among other things. To be eligible, parties must achieve minimum shares in the most recent elections at state, federal and European levels.
Since the NPD recently failed to do this, according to Bundestag figures, it has not received any money since 2021. A year earlier it was around 370,600 euros – it received 3.02 percent of the votes in the 2016 state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. For comparison: In 2016, when the party was credited with more electoral successes, it was entitled to more than 1.1 million euros. To put it into perspective: the SPD received the highest sum at that time, almost 51 million euros.
Blueprint for the AfD?
There was a scandal at the oral hearing in July last year because no party representative appeared – according to the court, a one-off event. Die Heimat didn’t send anyone to the verdict either. At the time, the party declared on its website that it would not allow itself to be “made into an extra in a justice simulation.” The negotiation will “degenerate into a show trial”. Since there is no requirement to be present, the court continued the hearing.
The decision could also be a blueprint for the AfD. CSU boss Markus Söder, for example, brought up the option of a funding exclusion procedure in the current debate about a possible AfD ban.