Erika Steinbach, chairwoman of the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation, comments on the passing of the foundation law:
„Opposition forces are marginalised and suppressed in Germany like in hardly any other EU country. If Hungary or Poland were to behave in this way, there would be a huge outcry in Germany.
With the passing of the new law promoting political foundations, the German Bundestag has openly demonstrated an alarming contempt for democracy that would do credit to any authoritarian country.
The law on the financing of party-affiliated political foundations, which was passed with almost all votes from the other parliamentary groups against the AfD parliamentary group, is nothing more than another deliberate attempt to exclude an important opposition force in the pre-political arena.
The German Bundestag's treatment of the opposition AfD and its political environment has already shown clear contempt for democracy in the past.
The refusal of committee chairpersons, the refusal of a vice-president and now the continued exclusion of our Desiderius Erasmus Foundation, which is close to the AfD, simply by further postponing the approval of funding until the third legislative period, demonstrates a degree of hostility to democracy that is almost inconceivable to me, something I could never have imagined in Germany after 1945.
An important opposition and its political environment are openly and unabashedly denied basic rights that should be taken for granted. This is how democracy is strangled. It is becoming clear that effective political opposition is to be suppressed both in parliament and in the pre-political arena.
Last year, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published a book entitled How Democracies Die. In it, the two authors identify important „key indicators of authoritarian behaviour“.
This includes denying the legitimacy of a political opponent and being prepared to curtail the rights of the opposition, as well as issuing warnings. against rhetoric that declares opposition forces to be „enemies of the state or opponents of the existing order“ and attempts to „exclude them from full participation in political life“. In addition, broadly defined defamation laws are seen as indicators of a threat to democracy, with warnings of „legal action“ against „critics in competing parties, civil society or the media“. According to the two political scientists, these measures are carried out under the „guise of legality“.
These observations on the subcutaneous erosion of democracy, written at Harvard in 2022, read like a reckoning with German politics. And they show us that the „guard rails of democracy“, as the two authors diagnose such treatment of the opposition, have long since been broken in Germany.
Because all of this has become part of everyday life here in Germany.
Today has once again made it painfully clear that opposition forces in Germany are marginalised and suppressed like in hardly any other EU country.
If Hungary or Poland were to treat their opposition in this way, the outcry and indignation would be unmistakable, even leading to demands for EU funds to be cut immediately.“
Press release dated 10 November 2023, press statement on the Foundation Act.pdf