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The prime minister of the East German state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, has stopped the increase in the radio license fee in Germany to save his black-red-green coalition. Public broadcasters announced within hours of Tuesday’s decision that they would sue the Federal Constitutional Court.
The CDU politician on Tuesday blocked a decisive vote in the state parliament after the CDU, SPD and the Greens fought in vain for a joint vote for weeks. This blocks the increase in the premium.
As announced by the State Chancellery in Magdeburg, Haseloff withdrew the bill on the state treaty before the decisive session of the state parliament. This means there is no need for further consideration in parliament, he said. In fact, this means a blocking of the planned contribution increase, because if not all the state parliaments agree before the end of the year, it is canceled.
The CDU has repeatedly made clear that it does not want to accept the planned increase from 86 cents to 18.36 euros. Since the AfD also rejects an increase, the CDU could theoretically have blocked the measure against the will of its coalition partners. In any case, Haseloff wanted to avoid a joint vote between his CDU and the AfD. The SPD and the Greens had announced that such a case would no longer see a future for the Kenyan alliance, which has been in power since 2016. A new state parliament will be elected in Saxony-Anhalt on June 6, 2021.
Haseloff defended his move after a cabinet meeting: He had to take note seriously that the bill would not find a majority in the state parliament, the CDU politician said. For him, the stability of the country through a “middle coalition” and in the middle of the pandemic crown had absolute priority. “That is why the decision was made today and I stand by it.”
Haseloff appears to have thus resolved his second construction site in the coalition dispute: The Greens criticized Haseloff’s CDU actions, but announced that they would remain in government due to Corona’s difficult situation. “In this difficult situation, we cannot leave the country to a CDU that tends to be incapable of acting, and certainly not to a right-wing AfD,” said state chief Sebastian Striegel.
The SPD acknowledged that the Prime Minister wanted to avoid a joint vote between the CDU and AfD and save the coalition, said the leader of the parliamentary group Katja Pähle. “With the abandonment of the State Treaty, however, it paid a considerable political price among the heads of government of the federal states.” However, the CDU in the state parliament welcomed Haseloff’s decision as correct and consistent. “Openness and credibility pay off,” said media politician Markus Kurz.
Now the German Federal Constitutional Court has to decide whether the transmission rate will be increased anyway and how the funding of public broadcasters will continue. ZDF, Deutschlandradio and ARD broadcasters independently announced that they would move to Karlsruhe.
“Unfortunately, a constitutional complaint is unavoidable,” said ARD President Tom Buhrow. “Without sufficient, independently determined funding, the range of programs, which is rooted in all regions of Germany, will suffer.”
ZDF Director Thomas Bellut said: “Today it is clear that there can be no approval in Saxony-Anhalt. Unfortunately, there is no other option but to appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court.”
Deutschlandradio said that funding based on the needs of public broadcasters was no longer guaranteed from 2021. Artistic director Stefan Raue emphasized: “We already have to follow a strict course of austerity to be visible with our offerings in the digital world. If we don’t increase this, we will inevitably have an impact on programming. “
There was also clear criticism from the head of the Saxon CDU and Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer. “I think that’s impossible,” he commented on Haseloff’s decision. For criticism and changes in public broadcasting, majorities must be organized in reasonable debate with other federal states.
The federal head of the CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, praised Haseloff for his decision, but at the same time criticized the negative attitude of the CDU parliamentary group of Saxony-Anhalt: “I and the majority in the CDU do not share this position”, he told the news portal. “t-online”.
However, the leader of the CSU regional group, Alexander Dobrindt, supported Haseloff’s decision – the decision to avoid a long-running government crisis is understandable, Dobrindt said in Berlin. At the same time, he criticized the processes of the last weeks: “We would have liked the process to be significantly different.” But it is clear: “Cooperation with the AfD cannot and will not exist.”
The Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, spoke of a “black day for the history of the media in Germany”. The SPD politician is the head of the broadcasting commission of the federal states.
The AfD called the withdrawal of the bill a success. It has repeatedly shown “that the AfD can also develop an impact from the opposition,” said the head of the AfD parliamentary group, Alice Weidel, of the German press agency. Without the AfD, the increase in the contribution “would have gone smoothly and without contradictions.”
