Law Expert™ Prof. Gersdorf Declares GO/NGO Funding 'Unconstitutional'
Rarely have I seen arguments™ as incoherent and detached from reality as this piece that appeared, no less, in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: with such experts™, no change is possible
Days after the German elections, its purported ‘winner™’—the conservative-in-name-only CDU/CSU faction led by Blackrock’s very own Friedrich Merz—is backtracking and flip-flopping as hard as they can: before 23 Feb., they claimed to be in favour of ‘closing the border’, now Mr. Merz says ‘no-one wants to close the border’.
Even more egregiously, though, is the notion that CDU/CSU, the SPD, and the Greens now seek to push for more ‘rearmament’ via an Orwellian-named ‘special funding vehicle’ (orig. Sondervmögen)—in reality, this is a gigantic slush fund, all debt-financed (sic), and it would not pass in the newly-elected Bundestag. This is why, as reported widely across legacy media (see, e.g., here for the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s piece), the old, outgoing Bundestag will reconvene one more time to perform a vote.
‘Even’ (sic) Austrian state broadcaster reports™ on the consequences of these shenanigans somewhat accurately: ‘Europe’s arms industry soars’, ORF Online wrote the other day (5 March 2025), calling the merchants of death EUrope’s (no typo) ‘economic engine of growth’ (orig. Konjunkturmotor).
And this constellation brings us now full-circle with my recent reporting on GO/NGOs and their nefarious role in domestic and international politicking: basically, my thesis is that this kind of influence-peddling once had a rather very bad reputation (‘lobbying’), and in the past 25 years, it’s been normalised to such an extent that these practices are so pervasive it’s hard to notice them.
Hence, today we’ll look at whether gov’t-funding for virtually every kind of GO/NGO may be legal.
it’s certainly very much immoral from the perspective of a democratic-republican régime as these GO/NGOs and their nefarious enterprises call into question the very possibility of an informed and alert citizenry.
The below translation is mine, as are the emphases and the [snark].
Why Current NGO Funding Practices Are Unconstitutional [in Germany]
The CDU/CSU’s small interpellation [kleine Anfrage] on state funding for NGOs shows that there is no legal basis. The decision on the allocation of funds should also not lie with the government.
An Op-ed by Hubertus Gersdorf, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 Feb. 2025 [source; archived]
Rarely has a parliamentary enquiry led to so much uproar as that of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group on the political neutrality of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The accusations range from ‘attack on civil society’ and ‘intimidation of civil society organisations’ to ‘almost Trumpian conditions’ [isn’t it amazing how quickly Mr. Trump and Anti-Americanism have become the personification of all evil over here? I mean, it’s not as if there are no other bad régimes, e.g., North Korea, China, etc., to say nothing about yesteryear’s bête noire, Vladimir Putin’s Russia].
According to the enquiry, the ‘background…is the protests against the CDU in Germany, some of which were organised or supported by non-profit associations or state-funded organisations’ [this is ‘Stupid Watergate’, as I call it, the bruahahaha triggered by gov’t-funded agit-prop performer Correctiv’s assertion of a ‘Wannsee Conference 2.0’ (I’m not making this up) that ‘prompted™’ the gov’t to call for mass-protests ‘against the right’, which involved both the gov’t and the intel community and looks like a sting op]. Non-profit and state-funded organisations are obliged to maintain political neutrality. They are not permitted to exert targeted party-political influence (before elections [only then, and since we’re talking Germany, there are certainly rules and laws determining the exact dating here]).
With a total of 551 questions, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group is requesting information from the federal government on which non-profit organisations received federal funding during the last parliamentary term. This is followed by questions on the campaigns, donations and political connections of a large number of social organisations such as ‘Omas gegen Rechts’, Campact, and Attac [while the first of these is the hilariously absurd ‘grannies against the right’, and if you have some time, watch this clip; the other two organisations, Campact and Attac, are notoriously far-left ‘pro-nature™’ institutions that often ‘protest’ in their own ways, such as at the G8 Summit in Genoa in 2001; both have sizeable contingents of very far-left/Bolshevik/Maoist cadres].
What is it About and What is it Not About?
The fact that civil society [sic] organisations can set themselves political goals, advocate for them, and literally take sides in public discourse is a matter of course and covered by our fundamental rights. Unlike the state, civil society organisations are not obliged to be party-political or even politically neutral. Such an obligation would be the opposite of (constitutionally protected) freedom [of association; note that these freedoms don’t come with special access to gov’t funding].
But that is not what the enquiry is about. It is solely about the state, i.e., what constitutional standards apply when the state provides financial support to social organisations, such as within the framework of the federal ‘Live Democracy!’ programme, which had a funding volume of 182 million euros in 2023 alone.
Unclear Legal Situation
The fact that the state is obliged to remain neutral in the competition between political parties is in line with the established case law of the Federal Constitutional Court. This principle applies in particular to the head of state, i.e., the Federal Chancellor and Federal Ministers. Whether the principle of neutrality also applies when the state supports civil society organisations has not been clarified [basically, this is a constitutional court case in the making].
Prevent Circumvention [of Freedoms by the Gov’t]
One argument in favour of this is that otherwise there is a risk of the state circumventing its duty of neutrality by not acting itself [in the open, as the gov’t], but instead promoting the corresponding activities of third parties [in the state’s interest without clearly disclosing it; if you and I did this in the private sector, it would be fraud or worse]. This danger is certainly virulent because the Federal Constitutional Court is repeatedly forced to remind state bodies of their duty of neutrality [because ‘state bodies’ don’t adhere to the limits in the constitution]. In order to counteract the risk of circumvention, what applies to the state must also apply to civil society organisations if the state promotes them for the purpose of safeguarding democracy [so, who’s going to do law enforcement here? What about standards of proof? We do have a judiciary (now, since Covid, mostly defunct in upholding the rule of law), which is technically the branch of gov’t to call upon here, yet they don’t (note that the WEF’s core mission is to ‘bring together government, businesses and civil society’)]. For example, since the state itself may not call for participation in a demonstration against a particular political party, civil society organisations are not permitted to do so with the help of state funding [the same applies to, say, state-funded agit-prop peddlers, such as Correctiv, I’d add].
If civil society organisations receive state funding, the neutrality requirement also applies to them [sounds right, doesn’t it? Problem is, as always, who’s going to do the enforcement?]. The state must ensure that the subsidised institutions remain strictly neutral with regard to political parties [and this is where the good professor Gersdorf outs himself as a totalitarian (and please just pick whether he’s a right-wing or left-wing extremists for both fascism and communism place the state über alles)]. This obligation to party-political neutrality must be regulated by law and must also be made part of the funding decision. Violations of the neutrality requirement must lead to the cancellation of the grant and the reclaiming of the funds [oh my, dear colleague Gersdorf, this is, of course, a no-brainer but also totally outlandish: gov’t funding of ‘NGOs’ has been spent, mostly on personnel costs, and there’s no way in hell any of the money will come back, like, ever]. The recipient of the grant must not be able to invoke a loss of enrichment.
Party-political and Political Neutrality
However, state support for politically active civil society organisations is not only about party-political neutrality, but also about political neutrality [this paragraph is where prof. Gersdorf contradicts whatever he purported earlier: the FAZ piece is wildly incoherent in terms of logic and stringency]. The state itself is only obliged to party-political neutrality and not also to general political neutrality. By its very nature, state leadership is geared towards the realisation of its own political goals; it cannot be politically neutral. However, this does not apply if the state supports civil society organisations [and the very leftists and experts™ alike deride mediaeval scholastics arguing about how many angels might find space on the tip of a needle…].
The democratic principle of the Basic Law stipulates that the will of the people must be formed by the state organs, i.e., ‘from the bottom up’ [I’ve added Italics here as the good professor goes, once more, totally off the rails: if ‘the will of the people’ must be channelled ‘by the state organs’, it’s a way of mediating, via representative institutions, whatever the people desire; it’s, once more, about the supremacy of ‘the state’, not any kind of ‘bottom-up’ stuff]. It is therefore opposed to the state influencing or even directing the communication process, which is protected by fundamental rights [notice the sleight-of-hand as ‘the will of the people’ has now morphed into a ‘communication process’, which reeks of…well, form over substance]. There is a risk of such influence if the state financially supports social organisations whose statutory purpose is to participate in the (political) decision-making of the people.
Such support also collides with the fundamental right of the individual to equal participation in political decision-making. This principle of equal participation applies not only in elections, but also outside of elections. Accordingly, the tax deductibility of donations to political parties, for example, must not be structured in such a way that it ultimately only benefits higher earners, who thus have greater opportunities for political participation than the general population.
The principle of equal participation in political decision-making is a core element of democracy. This was unequivocally established by the Federal Constitutional Court in the NPD party ban proceedings and in the proceedings to exclude the party Die Heimat from state party funding [both were right-wing extremists with ties to Neo-Nazi organisations, hence their ban].
Violations of the Reservation of the Law
Furthermore, state funding of social organisations is subject to the law [I hope so, otherwise it would be extra-legal or illegal]. The financial support of NGOs involved in political communication must be regulated by law to ensure party-political neutrality and the principle of democracy. However, such a law has not yet been passed, which means that the funding practice at both federal and state level is unconstitutional [why the good professor spends (wastes) so much time on blablabla before noting this is beyond me, but don’t worry, prof. Gersdorf immediately backtracks].
Safeguard Mechanisms Required
This is not to say that the state’s promotion of democracy is ruled out per se. It is just that a legal basis is required for this [see, there’s no legal basis, but that doesn’t mean it’s illegal, eh?]. Above all, however, procedural and organisational safeguards are required. The decision on the allocation of funds must not lie in the hands of the government or government-dependent bodies [who, then, is to allocated state funding? A NGO perhaps? Do note that this piece is getting worse the longer it goes on: state funding derives from taxation plus debt-based financing (which is securitised by taxes), and it is the primary raison d’etre for both central government and its core function, taxation, since around 1700: if the gov’t no longer does tax-and-finance shenanigans, why do we need gov’t?]. If this is the case, there is a risk that the government in question will support politically convenient organisations and ignore others when selecting funding recipients [note that I’m sure prof. Gersdorf intends that ‘if’ to introduce an possibility; I think it’s a reality].
Red-green governments could support red-green organisations and black [conservative-in-name-only] governments their own. In this way, the government can gain influence over the opinion-forming and decision-making process of the people and also interfere with the right of organisations to equal participation in political decision-making [in a perfect world, the gov’t would address, say, mass migration and associated crime rates; or work ceaselessly to uncover all the Covid-related shenanigans, to say nothing about Berlin carrying a big stick when speaking loudly about the Nord Stream bombing—the fact that none of these things are happening tells you all you need to know].
Indirectly affected are the citizens who, depending on their political convictions, are close to the funded or non-funded organisations [note that the technically—constitutionally—wellspring of democratic-republican régimes, the sovereign citizens, are but an after-thought in prof. Gersdorf’s piece]. The ‘ideal solution’ could be to entrust the selection of funding recipients to a body that is independent of the government and, if necessary, composed of a pluralistic group of people [ah, finally we learn about a proposed ‘solution’: let GO/NGOs police themselves, perhaps add some ‘diverse’ assessors and call it a day: what could go wrong? (as an aside, this is how legacy media ‘watches™’ over itself by wagging fingers at the invariable bad apples who, every now and then, transgress the largely unwritten rules of establishment journalism™)]. Such an organisational model already exists, for example in the licensing and supervision of the media [do you see it now? It’s the literal equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop, or the gov’t enforcing the laws it proposed in the first place].
Without such safeguards, state funding of social organisations does not serve democracy, but endangers it. Here too, the good end [sic] does not justify the means.
Professor Dr Hubertus Gersdorf holds the Chair of Constitutional and Administrative Law and Media Law at the University of Leipzig [faculty profile; Wikipedia].
Bottom Lines
This is what passes for expert opinion these days.
It’s an intellectual clusterf*** couched in manure and with loads of lipstick applied to certain body-parts.
Prof. Gersdorf is as incoherent as he appears oblivious to the fact that legacy media self-policing is a gigantic fraud (to say the least), and the entire can of worms known as the Covid Op has not entered the eternally spotless mind of the good professor.
He’s saying some helpful things (e.g., that GO/NGO funding may be unconstitutional), but at the same time, the above piece is so incoherent it boggles the mind.
The problematic organisation overshadowing any of the above considerations, the EU (Commission), is never mentioned, and whatever one thinks of it (only bad things, if you’d ask me), I’m 112% certain that any kind of regulatory™ schemes dreamed up in, say, Germany, will quickly attract the unceasing wrath of the Mordor Brussel-based ringwraiths:
And then there’s the entirely different, if very much related, can of worms known as separation of powers and gov’t oversight.
If the gov’t illegally, or extra-legally, funds GO/NGOs, where are the public prosecutors bringing charges? Where are the judges presiding over such cases?
Oh, well, do you hear the crickets chirp?
Sadly, incoherent and unrealistic pieces like the one above won’t do anything.
At this point, we note that the current system of order hasn’t got a lot of mileage left, hence it may very well be totally useless to seek to reform it at this late hour.
As things stand, I doubt that any meaningful changes are possible within the current framework (think: EU, NATO), and as long as these aspects—that remain unmentioned in the above piece—are clarified, nothing can happen.
Hence, nothing will change for the time being.
But this situation begs the question: what might happen once change, understood as becoming possible under these conditions, becomes possible?
„..to perform a vote…“
That’s a nice turn of phrase. Imma go steal it.
It's only wrong, when the wrong people do it, and then only because it is done by the wrong people.
To be alive, when the above is seen as the guiding principle of the humanities and the social sciences! Dr Pangloss wasn't supposed to be a role-model, was he?