Focus on Germany London Office The Chandlery Office 609 50 Westminster Bridge Road GB London SE1 7QY Tel 00 44 20 77 21 87 45 Fax 00 44 20 77 21 87 46 feslondon@dial.pipex.com www.fes.de/london March 2006 State Funding for Political Parties in Germany A brief overview Ernst Hillebrand Constitutional basis Political parties in Germany receive consid­erable public support. The basis for this support lies in the Constitution of the Fed­eral Republic of Germany where parties are defined as central institutions of a democ­ratic political system. Article 21 of the Ger­man Basic Law stipulates: “The political parties shall participate in the forming of the political will of the people. They may be freely established. Their inter­nal organization shall conform to democ­ratic principles. They shall publicly account for the sources and the use of their funds and for their assets.” This is essentially the formulation of a mu­tual obligation whereby parties are, on the one hand, provided with state funds and on the other hand obliged to inform the public in detail about the use as well and sources of their funds(state finance as well as in­come obtained by the parties themselves). The background for this regulation is – as for so many provisions of the Basic Law – Germany’s experience during the Post­World War I Weimar Republic when power­ful and rich private interest groups and indi­viduals financed the rise of the Nazi party NSDAP. _________________________ Ernst Hillebrand is Director of FES London The basic provisions of party finance The present form of party finance is gov­erned by the amendment of the Law on Parties in 1994. This legislation stipulates the following: Each party which obtained more than 0.5% of the votes in the last elections to the European Parliament or to the German Bundestag or more than 1% of the votes in elections to the parliaments of the states (Bundesländer) is entitled to state funding. 1 These public funds may, however, not ex­ceed 50% of the party’s total income. State funds are paid on an annual basis and there are two decisive factors that de­termine the calculation of the amount granted: (1) the average of votes obtained in the last three elections; for each vote obtained, the parties receive 0.85€ (59p) per year up to the first 4 mil­1 This is a significantly lower hurdle than that of 5 percent required to achieve representation in the parliament. The aim is to keep the threshold for the foundation of political parties as low as possible and to facilitate democratic competi­tion.