When the public prosecutor knocks on the door of the Greens

You are reading an excerpt from the weekday newsletter “The Other View”, today by Jonas Hermann, Managing Editor in the Berlin office of the NZZ. Subscribe to the newsletter for free. Not resident in Germany? Benefit here.

Journalists are drummed into it even during their training: If the public prosecutor is investigating, that doesn’t mean very much. Investigations can be dropped or proven innocent. The fact that the Berlin public prosecutor’s office is targeting the entire board of a party would be remarkable even for the scandalous AfD. In the case of the Greens, it even touches on the core of the brand.

While other parties have repeatedly been talked about with financial affairs, the Greens have largely stayed out of this, at least at the federal level. That seems to be over now. The six-member federal executive board of the Greens has approved a “corona bonus” of 1,500 euros per person for 2020. Giving yourself a bonus is a bit like bringing a bottle of wine to a party and then drinking it yourself. Annalena Baerbock or Robert Habeck, who benefited from the bonuses as party leaders, could have noticed that.

Whether the payment was legal is the subject of the investigation because of the initial suspicion of infidelity. The reaction of the party seems almost like an admission of guilt: According to media reports, the finance council of the Greens disapproved of the action, and Federal Treasurer Marc Urbatsch ordered the repayment of the bonuses from which he had also benefited. Whether the special payment was legal can be found in the so-called financial and honor regulations of the Greens, which are not public. That hardly suits a party that likes to demand maximum transparency in similar cases.

Tax money for never submitted promotion

The bonus payments made headlines a few months ago. At that time it became public that the party leader and current Foreign Minister Baerbock had not reported them to the Bundestag as required. The same applied to her Christmas bonus.

Baerbock’s doctoral scholarship from the Böll Foundation was also an issue at the time. Her doctoral thesis was funded with 48,000 euros from taxes, but she never handed it in. Instead, she was state chairwoman of the Brandenburg Greens while she was doing her doctorate – and according to internal documents, she was well over 50 percent busy. In doing so, she probably violated the statutory funding guidelines. The fact that Baerbock benefited from the support is obvious, whether science or society benefited from it, at least questionable.

All of this has an aftertaste. One can see in this evidence that the parties have developed a questionable relationship with those who actually finance them. It’s mostly tax money that keeps the party going. Every year, more than 500 million euros from taxes flow into the various foundations of the Bundestag parties alone. The ever-expanding Bundestag has to build extensions and costs around one billion euros a year. The parties have shrunk a long-overdue reform to a mere reform, because none of them wanted to give up their sinecure.

The ecosystem of the party state

Membership in the major parties has halved since 1990. That’s hard to say about the number of people who benefit directly or indirectly from them. Loyal, active members can always hope for a job or post in the far-reaching ecosystem of the party state. The number of full-time positions in the ministries has skyrocketed in recent years. When these posts are filled, of course, people don’t immediately ask for their party membership. However, membership can be useful because parties are finely woven career networks.

The German party state is not yet the proverbial self-service shop, but the impression that it could be so should be avoided. Pointless corona bonuses for party officials convey an unfortunate picture and go in the wrong direction. This is all the more true if they may have been paid out illegally.