AfD comes away empty-handed: major donors mostly turn to the FDP

AfD comes out empty-handed
Major donors mostly turn to the FDP

An election year usually brings a lot of benefits to the parties. The liberals in particular have benefited from this recently. They collected most of the money from large donors. Hardly wealthy patrons were able to win over the SPD and the left. Despite considerable donations, the CDU will probably also face financially lean times.

The election year brought the parties represented in the Bundestag a blessing from large donations – albeit with major differences. They received from these donations of more than 50,000 euros altogether almost exactly 12.4 million euros, like that Publication by the German Bundestag indicates. For comparison: in the previous year, companies, trade associations and individuals only donated a good 2.2 million euros.

Classically, such large donations increase significantly in the years of the Bundestag election. However, this time they were particularly lush. For example, the income of the Bundestag parties from this source in the 2017 election year was around 6.59 million euros.

This time the FDP had a particularly large number of patrons, with revenues of around 4.43 million euros. They are followed by the Greens with 3.44 million and the CDU with just under 3.39 million euros. The Union as a whole – i.e. CDU plus CSU – comes to around 4.26 million euros. All other parties are far behind. The SPD only made three major donations totaling 225,001 euros, while the Left received 55,000 euros. The AfD came out completely empty.

Union has to tighten its belt

Political parties in Germany are mainly financed by membership fees, money from the state and donations. The parties must immediately report individual donations of over 50,000 euros to the President of the Bundestag, who must publish the information promptly. Donations that exceed EUR 10,000 per year must be recorded in the statement of accounts with the name and address of the donor and the total amount. It is forwarded to the President of the Bundestag.

The organization Transparency International criticized the existing regulations. “We are of the opinion that donations to the parties should be disclosed with a much lower threshold,” said the chairman of Transparency Germany, Hartmut Bäumer, and suggests a threshold of 2000 euros.

It was noticeable this year: The two largest donations, namely one million euros and one 1.25 million euros, went to the account of the Greens. The latter was done by the Dutchman Steven Schuurman. The media entrepreneur justified his engagement in the “Handelsblatt” with the fact that the Greens understood better than the Union and the SPD how to react to the “human task” of climate change. Behind are the FDP and CSU, each with a donation of 750,000 euros. The FDP also has the highest number of individual donors.

For the Union, the relatively high income is just a drop in the ocean. Because of their historically poor performance in the federal election in September, the CDU and CSU will receive considerably less income than before from state party funding. This is calculated, among other things, according to the votes. In addition, the CDU incurs high expenses for the election of its new party chairmen Armin Laschet and Friedrich Merz at federal party conferences last and next January and the membership survey that has just taken place.

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