Money and Politics

In Germany, the legitimization of political parties is set out in Article 21 of the country's constitution, known as the Basic Law.

This states that "political parties shall participate in the formation of the political will of the people. They may be freely established. Their internal organization must conform to democratic principles. They must publicly account for their assets and for the sources and use of their funds."

If parties are to participate effectively in the formation of the political will of the people, some kind of state funding is required. There has long been disagreement over what form this should take and a new debate has arisen after fresh proposals by the parties making up the ruling grand coalition were made.

In Germany, if you want to join a political party you have to pay a regular membership fee. However these fees alone are not sufficient for the parties' needs and they receive additional financing from tax revenues.

Success ratio

The precise amount each party receives depends on the extent to which it is rooted within society. In other words, the size of the tax contribution is calculated on the basis of a party's electoral success and on how many registered members it has. At present, Germany's political parties receive some 133 million euros ($181 million) from tax revenues. But calls for this to be increased are growing louder.

For some time now Germany's two largest parties, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), have been losing members. The result is that income from membership fees has declined, which in turn has led to their receiving a smaller share of tax revenue. This has prompted the current CDU/SPD governing coalition to propose an increase in the amount of financing from taxes.

Recent media reports that quoted a figure of up to 15 percent unleashed a storm of protest from opposition politicians and constitutional experts.

Don't tamper with the constitution!

Volker Beck of the environmentalist Green party advises against "bringing into question the basic principles of the established laws governing political parties in Germany."

Hans Herbert von Arnim, an expert in constitutional law, agreed, saying it would be wrong to use the decline in the number of party members as an argument. "To make the taxpayers pay for this is a reversal of responsibility," he said.

Similar comments have come from Reiner Holznagel of the German Taxpayers' Federation. "The taxpayer should not be penalized for the fact that the parties are losing members," he said. "The parties should come up with other ideas - and above all they need to find ways to cut costs."

Cutbacks

This is something the CDU and SPD have been doing for years. They've cut back on staff, holiday pay and salary increases. But this has not been enough to offset the decline in funds coming in.

However, the force of the current criticism has resulted in a flurry of denials from leading members of both parties that they were envisaging an increase of as much as 15 percent.

The likely solution is that state funding for political parties will be brought into line with the increase in costs generally.

According to current legislation, any increase in state subsidies should be pegged to a price index which the Federal Statistics Office presents to parliament each year. Current figures indicate that the parties would be entitled to an increase of 5.9 percent which is around 7.8 million euros.

That should go some way towards easing their situation and calm the fears of those who had feared an attack on the constitution.