The process to ban the right-wing extremist NPD failed years ago; the party has now renamed itself “Die Heimat” and is now just a splinter group. This Tuesday, the mini-party is at the center of a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court that could have major consequences.
The question was whether the NPD could be excluded from state party funding. The judges in Karlsruhe have now decided: the party will have its state funding cut off for six years.
The extent to which the Federal Constitutional Court’s decision could affect the AfD is likely to be discussed. Their importance is far greater than that of the NPD once was. Some politicians and constitutional law experts advocate excluding the AfD from state funding instead of banning it.
In 2016, the NPD received more than one million euros from the state
In Germany, parties are partly financed by government grants. According to the party law, they are entitled to money if they reach certain voting shares, the threshold is 0.5 percent for federal and European elections and 1.0 percent for state elections.
At times the NPD reached this threshold in individual elections. In 2016 it received more than 1.1 million euros from the state, and in 2020 it received 370,000. Since 2021, however, the NPD has no longer received any money because it was unable to attract enough votes.
The current procedure in Karlsruhe (AZ 2 BvB 1/19) was the first of its kind. It was created in 2017 after the ban proceedings against the NPD failed. The highest German court had rejected the NPD ban at the time because there was no evidence that it could actually implement its anti-constitutional goals.
The legislature reacted and tried to achieve, if not a ban, then at least an exclusion of the NPD from state funding. Constitution – specifically Article 21 paragraph 3 – was changed accordingly. And the Bundestag, Bundesrat and Federal Government applied, as provided for in the law – to exclude the NPD and possible replacement and successor parties from party financing for six years.
The NPD sued because it sees this as a violation of the principle of equal opportunities for parties enshrined in the Basic Law – and more generally – the requirement of democracy as such. The Constitutional Court now denied this. The democratic requirement set out in Article 79 paragraph 3 of the Basic Law – the so-called eternity clause – does not extend to those parties that fight and want to abolish the free democratic basic order.
There was a scandal at the oral hearing in July last year because no representative of the party appeared – according to the court, this was a one-off event. A spokesman for the “Die Heimat” party had already announced that no one would come to the verdict. 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.”
According to Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD), the procedure is “of great political importance”. It has never been explained to the population that enemies of the constitution are supported with tax money.
In the reasons for the judgment, Doris König, the chairwoman of the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court, discussed the differences between an application for a ban on a particular party and an application for exclusion from party financing for this party. The prerequisites for the success of the respective application are largely the same in both cases. However, a successful application for a party ban requires that the respective party also has the chance to put its anti-constitutional goals into practice. Lawyers speak of so-called potentiality. The exclusion from party financing does not matter. It is possible if the party’s goals are aimed at abolishing the free democratic basic order.