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AfD leaders Chrupalla and Weidel
Photo: Political Moments / IMAGO
The AfD is classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as definitely right-wing extremist. Nevertheless, she receives a lot of money from the state. In fact, it is their largest source of income. For her, the share of public funds in total revenue is almost 45 percent, while for the SPD it is only just under 30 percent, as the parties' annual reports for 2022 published by the Bundestag show. More recent figures are not yet available. The reports also show that the SPD generates by far the highest income from membership fees of all parties.
With 10.4 million euros, the AfD received the lowest state funding in absolute terms of all parties in 2022. Mainly due to very low income from membership fees of only around 3.8 million euros (16.6 percent), this was a share of 44.9 percent of total income. For comparison: the SPD received around 47.7 million euros in state money. However, this only accounted for 29.8 percent of their total income. Membership fees of 54.5 million euros contributed 34 percent of the SPD's income.
For the CDU, the share of state money in total revenue was 32.6 percent. For the FDP it was 36.9, for the Left 36.1, for the Greens 35.4 and for the CSU 32.7 percent.
Partial state funding is based on the valid votes that a party received in the last state, federal and European elections. However, there is an absolute and a relative upper limit. The annual total amount set for partial state funding of political parties forms the absolute upper limit. In 2023 this was around 187.6 million euros. In addition, the party law stipulates that state financing of each party may not exceed the sum of its annual self-generated income. This is the relative upper limit. This is intended to prevent parties from being predominantly financed by the state.
dpa/löw