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Bundestag: So far, the budget committee decides on the distribution of the funds
Photo: Rainer Jensen / picture alliance / dpa
Political foundations receive grants from the federal budget.
How the funds are distributed and which foundations are taken into account has so far been decided by the Bundestag as part of budget deliberations.
However, the Greens want to change that.
In their opinion, the award should be regulated by law and no longer be left to the budget committee of the Bundestag.
The Greens parliamentary group hopes to find a way to prevent a possible disbursement of funds to the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation in the future.
So far, the foundation, which is headed by the former CDU politician Erika Steinbach, has not received any public funds, according to the federal government.
"We need clear and comprehensible rules that define a basis for transparent financing for all political foundations in a law," said the parliamentary manager of the Green parliamentary group, Britta Haßelmann, the dpa news agency.
The federal government, the Union and the SPD should "finally get going and give up their resistance to a foundation law".
Criticism of the intransparent process of granting funds
The parliamentary group's spokesman for science policy, Kai Gehring, said: "A publicly funded institution that prepares the ground for racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and queerophobia with an intellectual touch would be a heavy burden for our democracy." Therefore, it must also be guaranteed for the future that the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation does not receive any public funding.
The federal government has so far "avoided a clear, legal solution to the problem."
AfD budget politician Peter Boehringer had also spoken out in favor of a foundation law, albeit from a different perspective.
In November 2019 he said in the Bundestag that the financing of the six party-affiliated foundations "in a budgetary highly intransparent process" was "a scandalously one-sided self-service".
Like the other political foundations, the AfD-affiliated foundation wants public grants.
The Federal Constitutional Court rejected an urgent application by the party in August 2020.
The actual lawsuit has not yet been decided.
The Desiderius Erasmus Foundation has so far had little effect beyond AfD supporters.
She invites to lectures and organizes seminars.
asc / dpa
