The Constitutional Court (TC) of Germany decided this Tuesday to cut public funding to the small far-right party Die Heimat (The Homeland), in a historic ruling as it would open the legal possibility of applying a similar measure to the much larger far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which these days is the object of widespread rejection in massive demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country.
The High Court, based in Karlsruhe, reasoned its decision to suspend state financing and tax relief for six years to Die Heimat – the name adopted last June by the until then called National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) – with the argument of that seeks to undermine or eliminate “the fundamental democratic order” of Germany.
The TC thus responded to a 2019 request from the lower and upper houses of the federal Parliament (Bundestag and Bundesrat, respectively) and the Government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to strip the NPD of public financing, taking advantage of a 2017 constitutional amendment that allows the exclusion from state funds of parties “whose objectives or the behavior of their followers aim to alter or eliminate the free and democratic fundamental order or endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany.”
In its ruling, the Constitutional Court reasoned that the goal of Die Heimat “is to replace the existing constitutional system with an authoritarian state based on an ethnically defined Volksgemeinschaft (national community). “Its political concept does not respect the human dignity of all those who are not part of the ethnic Volksgemeinschaft and is also incompatible with the principle of democracy.” In 2017, faced with a request for illegalization, the TC already defined the NPD party in this way, but refused to illegalize it – something it had already done in another ruling in 2013 – considering it too small to achieve its purposes.
The ruling was welcomed by politicians from the other parties, with their sights set on the AfD, the second force in federal polls and first in the polls of three eastern länder that hold elections in September. “The High Court sends a clear message: our democratic State does not finance the enemies of the Constitution,” said the Minister of the Interior, Social Democrat Nancy Faeser, in a statement. The decision comes, she added, at a time when she demonstrates “once again that the far right is the biggest threat to our democracy.”
In Germany, any party that receives at least 0.5% of votes in general or European elections, or 1% in regional elections, receives public money. In this way, the AfD – which received 10.3% of the votes in the 2021 elections – was able to request 10.5 million euros in 2022.
In recent days, hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated in German cities against the AfD, after revealing the participation of some of its officials in a meeting of extreme right-wing identitarians and neo-Nazis last November in Potsdam, in which spoke of a plan to expel non-native people, including those with German nationality, from Germany.
There have also been calls to ban the party, which is already partially under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the interior secret services. However, this possibility of illegalization is very remote and complex, since almost all jurists agree that it would be constitutionally very complicated, and politicians add that it would allow the AfD to present itself as a victim.
The Constitutional Court has already twice rejected the outlawing of the NPD – which last June changed its name to Die Heimat -, founded in 1964 by former Nazi officials, although it has now decided to cut off public funding and tax relief for six years. The NPD has never managed to enter the Bundestag (Lower House of the federal Parliament); In the 2021 elections it had just 0.1% of the votes. However, it received up to 1.2 million euros from the public treasury between 2013 and 2016, when it had sufficient results in some municipalities and länder.
For Die Heimat, the current sanction is largely symbolic, since it has not exceeded the threshold in European, federal or regional elections necessary to qualify for financing. However, it will no longer benefit from the tax relief, which, according to different reports, amounted to 200,000 euros since 2020. The leader of Die Heimat, Frank Franz, described the TC ruling as a scandal.
There are only two historical precedents for the illegalization of parties. During the postwar period, with the Nazi regime still new and the country divided in two by the Cold War, the Constitutional Court of West Germany outlawed two parties. In 1952 he banned the SRP (Socialist Reich Party), heir to the Nazi party, and in 1956 he also banned the KPD (Communist Party of Germany).