Dhe Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder has spoken out against replacing the old-law state payments to the churches. Before the spring plenary session of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the CSU politician said on Friday that he was not a fan of the debate about ending state benefits. A replacement would “cost a lot of money” for the federal states, which is why he, like other prime ministers, is against it.
Söder was referring to considerations in the federal government that could result in the constitutionally required replacement of the permanent obligations of the states to the churches by paying a transfer fee to be paid in installments. In the past legislative period, the opposition parties FDP, Greens and Left Party introduced a corresponding draft law in the Bundestag, but the governing parties CDU/CSU and SPD slowed it down in the process.
In this legislative period, the SPD, Greens and FDP have committed themselves in their coalition agreement to creating a “Basic Law in dialogue with the states and the churches, a fair framework for the replacement of state services”.
Payments to churches increase
According to the provisions of the Weimar Reich Constitution of 1919 and the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of 1949, such a law is the prerequisite for the states to be able to successively replace their payment obligations. The German Bundestag has not yet complied with this constitutional mandate – and this despite the fact that the annual payments from the state to the churches are covered from general tax revenue.
Since the payments are not fixed amounts, but the benefits are dynamic, the financial obligations of the federal states increase from year to year. The two large churches together received almost 620 million euros last year.
In order to justify his resistance to the replacement of the constitution, Söder not only referred to the tense situation in the state budgets. In this context, he also appealed to the churches not to withdraw from society. The prime minister thereby implicitly adopted the tactics of the Catholic side. In order to prevent a basic law, their representatives in the federal government, as in some states, are threatening to give up social and educational institutions such as schools and day-care centers if the dioceses are no longer supported by the state as they have been up to now.
In this context, Söder also mentioned “universities”, which in Bavaria also includes the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. The Prime Minister’s statement is another indication that the Bavarian bishops are considering withdrawing from the sponsorship of the only Catholic university in the German-speaking area and handing this institution over to the Free State.
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