 | |
| Abbreviation | DES |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Promotion of democracy,promotion of science,International understanding,Development cooperation,Promotion of culture[1] |
| Location | |
Chair | Erika Steinbach[2] |
| Website | erasmus-stiftung |
TheDesiderius Erasmus Foundation (German:Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftunge.V.; Abbreviation:DES) is aGerman political party foundation associated with, but independent of the far-rightAlternative for Germany (AfD) party. The foundation's headquarters are located inBerlin. Its current chairwoman is the formerChristian-democratic politicianErika Steinbach who joined the AfD in January 2022.
The DES was registered in November 2017 in Lübeck. It was converted into a federal foundation from a foundation in the state ofSchleswig-Holstein that had been established two years earlier.
It is named after the Dutch Renaissance humanistic Christian thinker and writerErasmus of Rotterdam. This provoked ironic comments as the AfD has been extremely critical of theEuropean Union and the Euro currency since its foundation in 2013 by the economistBernd Lucke. "The name stands for a pro-European butEurosceptic position of the party", a party spokesperson explained in 2015.[3]The first chairman of the DES was publicist and politicianKonrad Adam.
Before the Desiderius Erasmus Foundation became the AfD's sole official party foundation, there was fierce competition among similar foundations. Former party chairmanAlexander Gauland preferred to have a foundation named after former Foreign Minister and ChancellorGustav Stresemann, though this was prohibited by Gustav Stresemann's family members, not wanting the name Stresemann being misused. Early supporter of the DES wasAlice Weidel, the party leader in the Bundestag. Other competitors were a "Friedrich Friesen Foundation" and "Johann Gottfried Herder Organization for Democracy".[4]
In April 2018, the national board of the party decided to accept the association of the Erasmus Foundation. The party convention in June 2018 held a vote and a two thirds majority agreed to adopt the DES as officially associated foundation.[5]
The DES describes its mission as providing civic-democratic political educational programs and the promotion of science and scholarly education.[6]
In accordance with AfD political orientation, the DES has a right-wing orientation. It has held several conferences and political seminars.
In June 2019 they held a large public conference in Berlin on the "growing threats to freedom of speech". Among the speakers were the party chairmanJörg Meuthen, Member of the European Parliament, the media scientistNorbert Bolz and the former East German civil rights activist andNeue Rechte politicianVera Lengsfeld. The speeches are documented in the first issue of the foundations journalFaktum.[7]
Since March 2018, former MP Erika Steinbach is president of the DES. She had left Angela Merkel'sChristian Democratic Union party (CDU) in 2017 in protest over the chancellor's open door migration policy.[8]
DES finances their operations with private donations and membership fees.
In their party program, the AfD criticizes that the other parties represented in the Bundestag have given their affiliated foundations now more than 600 million Euro funding from the federal budget per year. This, they claim, is a breach of the Federal Constitutional Court’s cap on state financing for parties.[9]
The newcomer party wants to limit state financing of parties and their foundations. Party chairman Alexander Gauland claimed it was his "political end goal" to abolish the system of state financed political foundations.[10]
So far, the DES has not received public funds, since it is sitting in the German parliament, theBundestag, only since 2017, one term. It is expected that the DES will get a share of the other party's foundations public financing if the AfD gets elected into the Bundestag a second time. In 2017 the German weekly newspaperDie Zeit estimated that the foundation could ultimately get as much as 80 million euros of public funds.[11] Funding is likely to be substantially lower. After a first funding request of 1.4 million euros was rejected by the Ministry of the Interior, the foundation has started legal action.[12]
According to a new law implemented in 2023, namely theStiftungsfinanzierungsgesetz, the share of the total party foundating funding of all parties that goes towards the DES is based on previous election results. Additionally, a political party foundation must demonstrate that "overall" it serves theliberal democratic basic order (§7). Furthermore, not only the foundation itself must pass the law, but also its "broad political movement" (e.g. associated media, networks and people). If those requirements were met, the DES would receive 25 million Euros in funding.[13]
Academics Markus Ogorek, chairman of theInstitut für Öffentliches Recht (Institute for public law) and Rudolf Mellinghoff, a former judge of the German constitutional court argue that based on that law, sufficient reason would be provided to exclude the foundation from public funding. They argue that the "broad political movement" of the foundation is anticonstitutional.[13]