There are strange organizations in Germany.
They do not pay their top staff themselves, but rely on others to pay for it.
They rail against the image of man behind bonus systems, but pay their people such allowances themselves.
They talk about how important content is to them, but when it comes to payment, they focus on market success.
We are talking about the political parties.
The debate that the Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock triggered with the belated declaration of her party income reveals some particular peculiarities among the Greens. At the same time, however, it shows that the relationship between party, parliament and government is not always thought through to the end, even when it comes to political competition.
As such, the requirements for separating these areas have become stricter and stricter over the years.
When a member of the government goes to an election campaign, the party pays the costs, not the ministry.
The parliamentary groups are also not allowed to use their budget to do direct election advertising.
That is why they like to disguise the prospectuses that they distribute to the citizens towards the end of the legislative period as an accountability report.
The separation may seem a little artificial at times, but that's the legal position.
The Greens pay their party leader too little money
But that doesn't seem to apply to the people at the very top. The CDU, for example, lives up to its reputation as a chancellor's electoral association in this respect: it simply relies on its chairman, ideally, receiving the salary of a head of government, or at least that of a parliamentary group leader or member of the Bundestag; When that was briefly different in the case of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, it was promptly a problem.
There are a number of associations and clubs that are essentially the same, that have an honorary president and a full-time managing director. But things are different with parties. Especially when they are in the opposition, the boss is by no means a presidential over-figure who has little to do with day-to-day work. The audience applauds the supposed modesty and is pleased that the politicians in question do not receive multiple salaries. In fact, what happens here is what should actually be excluded: cross-subsidization of party tasks by the state.
This is where the real problem lies with the Greens, too: They pay a party leader who is also sitting in the Bundestag not too much, but too little money - and they try to repair this opposition to the system with new system opposition: Why a person who does not even respond the party's payroll is up, but then receives Christmas bonuses and bonus payments, not only remains opaque, but also legally questionable. It is also difficult to explain that a substantial increase in income from party financing is partly distributed to employees as a bonus. The elected representatives, who transfer considerable parts of their salaries to the party coffers, are also likely to be surprised at this.
It is also astonishing by which conventional criteria the party of idealists of all places has enough money: according to the financial success of their own organization, which in turn depends on the popularity of the electoral market.
It would be more in line with one's own view of the world to reward employees after victories in the matter: for example, for a hard-won coal exit, for a new set of rules for the protection of species - or, at the FDP, for example, for implementing tax cuts.
Even with this, politicians and their employees would of course again be under suspicion of being commercially viable.
It stays that way: If the parties want a clear picture, then they have to pay their chairmen for the work they have done - regardless of what other activities they have.