It comes as no great surprise that the Federal Constitutional Court retrospectively approves the increase in the license fee. Nevertheless, the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt had taken a stand and now received a “cracking slap in the face”, as a media lawyer says. But Haseloff also sees positive things.
Shortly before the end of his press conference, Saxony-Anhalt’s Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff said that the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling did not surprise him. The Karlsruhe judges announced in the morning that the radio license fee should be increased by 86 cents to 18.36 euros. “That was a slap in the face,” says media lawyer Bernd Holznagel from the University of Münster in an interview with ntv.de. ARD and ZDF got what they wanted, and the blockade by the CDU, which stopped the increase in Magdeburg’s state parliament in December, has become meaningless.
One can now ask why Haseloff and the CDU picked up this slap in the face. Especially since your state violated broadcasting law. Particularly angry critics even speak of an attack on public service broadcasting. Haseloff and his Minister of Culture Rainer Robra do not want to know anything about that at noon in Magdeburg. After all, the court did not object to their approach, they say. In return, however, it confirmed the current procedure to increase the contribution against which the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt had rebelled before Christmas.
This procedure provides that the public broadcasters report their financial needs to a commission responsible only for this, the KEF. They then check it and submit it to the federal states for a vote – first the Prime Minister, then the parliaments. Haseloff had agreed last year, but had already warned that there was no majority in his state parliament. Because the CDU, SPD and Greens had agreed to keep the contributions stable. This question then threatened to break up the Kenya coalition. Interior Minister Holger Stahlknecht even brought a minority government into play until the end of the legislature – which would have opened the door to cooperation with the AfD. Haseloff then threw him out and saved the shaky coalition across the finish line – with success: in the state elections in June, he won well ahead of the AfD.
Second Thuringia prevented
Haseloff prevented the CDU and AfD from jointly rejecting the broadcasting contract – and at the same time prevented a second Thuringia, where the CDU, together with the AfD, had elected FDP man Thomas Kemmerich as short-term prime minister. “The AfD is sitting behind the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt,” said the political scientist Benjamin Höhne to ntv.de, who works in Berlin at the Institute for Parliamentary Research. It was about keeping the AfD in check, which would like to do away with public broadcasting altogether. At the cost of the coalition peace, the Prime Minister then abandoned it because he simply did not schedule the vote required by the end of 2020.
With his maneuver to save the Kenya coalition, Haseloff negotiated the constitutional complaint from ARD and ZDF. In Karlsruhe, the state then literally went under. “Saxony-Anhalt has overdone in every respect,” says media lawyer Holznagel. The country has hardly provided any arguments for its point of view. Especially since it wasn’t about what the CDU actually criticized – namely allegedly too little or one-sided reporting on East Germany, too much expenditure or too few broadcasters in the region.
The parliamentary manager of the CDU parliamentary group, Markus Kurz, had criticized the fact that there was only one – the children’s channel in Erfurt. At his press conference, Haseloff also said that there was some “significant imbalance”. He knows what salaries are in the ministerial law and what the institutions have. So ARD director Buhrow earns 395,000 euros a year, the Prime Minister in Saxony-Anhalt receives almost half the basic salary. “The concern of the CDU is justified in the beginning,” said Höhne. “What kind of public service broadcaster do you want, what is the mandate and how should it be configured? The debate should be conducted.” Other institutions, too, be it churches and trade unions, would have to react to changes. The fact that the topic was boiling up probably also had something to do with “feelings of deprivation” in some East Germans, according to Höhne.
Countries do not have the right to veto
According to Holznagel, however, the question in court was whether a single federal state has a right to veto broadcast fees. This is exactly what the judges of Saxony-Anhalt and all other countries have now said. “Now a single country can do nothing more,” said Holznagel. The state parliaments could only stop a contribution increase if everyone was against it. Holznagel puts it this way: “This means that the system has been made AfD-proof.” Because now a hypothetical AfD state government can practically no longer prevent radio increases. The possible reasons for rejecting a premium increase are severely limited in any case. For example, it would have to be proven that the contributors would be financially overtaxed. The procedure for the parliaments had previously only provided for a kind of “notarial enforcement function”.
Haseloff criticized precisely this point at his press conference at noon. “We have a democracy problem here,” he says. Because in a democracy the members of parliament should be able to decide freely, they are only obliged to their conscience. “This is a dilemma situation,” said the Prime Minister. He had hoped that the court would have given an “innovative tip” on this question. That stayed away. Haseloff’s Minister of Culture, Robra, demands that the KEF be given more power so that in the end the parliaments do not have to decide. However, he does not consider it likely that the parliaments will voluntarily give up their formal right to have a say.
Exactly this “dilemma situation” could ultimately benefit those who were at the beginning of the story. “I fear that the verdict will be difficult to convey,” says political scientist Hahn. “In the right-wing populist electorate it will now be said that the ‘cartel of the established’ will secure benefices.” AfD boss Tino Chrupalla already called the judgment “deeply undemocratic”.
Haseloff can also see positive things from the defeat in court. This is how a process started that “would not otherwise have existed”. He was probably referring to the new “cultural platform” that the state is to receive and that is to spread cultural highlights on the Internet from Halle. ARD director Buhrow said last year that they had nothing to do with each other. But the award may have helped to smooth things over. The MDR, which is responsible for Saxony-Anhalt, welcomed the contribution increase that has now been approved. Because that now enables the financing of that cultural platform.
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