You can think what you want about the AfD, but at least they fight honestly. The Federal Constitutional Court had just started the oral hearing on the organ lawsuit, with which the AfD wants to give the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation (DES) access to the millions in funding from the 660 million euro pot for the party-affiliated foundations. Her legal representative, Ulrich Vosgerau, was asked how he assessed the relationship between party and foundation, which oscillated between closeness and distance. Of course, Vosgerau said there shouldn’t be any campaign aid. On the other hand, one should not pretend that the parties have nothing to gain from it. “Cultivating the milieu is extremely important and accounts for the long-term success of parties.”
The AfD insists on equal opportunities in the competition between the parties, which it sees as being impaired by the fact that the other six parties represented in the Bundestag are allowed to cultivate their milieus with state-funded foundations. According to this logic, the Heinrich Böll Foundation would help ensure that the Fridays for Future movement remains in favor of the Greens, and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation should take care of up-and-coming young lawyers. Only the DES doesn’t get any state money for their “milieus”, which like to campaign against migration or “gender madness”.
Cool-off pool for deserving ex-politicians
Whereby: The representatives of the foundations who were invited to the exhibition in Karlsruhe vehemently resisted the impression that they were a subdivision of “their” party – or even a cooling-off pool for deserving ex-politicians. The Hanns Seidel Foundation did not do so well because of the overwhelming CSU density in its committees. But its secretary general, Oliver Jörg, also bravely assured: “There are no personnel changes between the party and the foundation and no joint project planning.”
That was also the sound of the other foundations. Norbert Lammert, chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is funded with 223 million euros, flirted with the fact that he had to keep hearing from CDU circles that the foundation was not doing anything for the party. “We don’t know whether our work will benefit the FDP,” said Annett Witte of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Sabine Fandrych from the board of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (192 million euros in 2021) sounded similarly reserved: “We are close to social democracy, but we do not intervene in political competition.”
Ultimately, the Federal Constitutional Court is also to blame for these rhetorical maneuvers. In a landmark judgment in 1986, it declared state funding for party-affiliated foundations to be permissible. Vice-President Doris König repeated the main features of the verdict: This is not about covert party financing – “provided that the foundations are legally and actually independent institutions that take on their task independently, on their own responsibility and with intellectual openness”.
The court is aiming for a landmark decision
The Karlsruhe court had of course created a strange hybrid being. On the one hand, foundations have to be “affiliated with the party”, because without recognition by “their” party, they do not receive state subsidies. At the same time, however, they are supposed to keep the parties at a distance, because otherwise they would open a back door for covert party financing. The foundations are therefore walking a fine line. Political education is allowed, with optional Christian, liberal, social or green content. With real party politics in the narrow sense, on the other hand, they would lose their legitimacy.
Erika Steinbach, chairwoman of the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation, showed no reservations about the AfD: “We are not political eunuchs and are in agreement with the AfD on the vast majority of issues”. The foundation can stimulate the socio-political discourse in the sense of the AfD. But anti-democratic, racist or inhuman ideas are taboo. The surprising confession of proximity provoked inquiries from the judges’ bench. “If I understand them correctly, they see themselves as the AfD’s auxiliary force,” noted Peter Müller. “It seems to me that the whole thing is getting close to party funding,” commented his colleague Christine Langenfeld.
In any case, the march of the foundations in Karlsruhe shows that the Federal Constitutional Court intends to make a new fundamental judgment on all these questions of proximity and distance. It is quite possible that the court will demand the enactment of a separate law. So far, the distribution of the funds is only in the budget law.