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Financial Problems

German Far-Right Party Says its Survival Is at Risk

Germany's far-right National Democratic Party faces an "existential crisis" as a result of its financial problems, its leader Udo Voigt has admitted. According to SPIEGEL, the payment of 300,000 euros in state funds to the NPD is being withheld, which means it may soon be unable to pay its bills.

The chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party, Udo Voigt, says his party's survival is at risk as a result of its financial problems.

According to SPIEGEL, the NPD may become insolvent in the coming months because it faces a fine of €1.9 million ($2.39 million) for accounting irregularities in 2007, and because a scheduled payment of €300,000 of taxpayers' money to the party has been suspended.

The NPD is a legitimate political party and as such is entitled to receive government funds even though the domestic intelligence service calls it a "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist" party which aims to remove parliamentary democracy and form a new German empire.

The office of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, is refusing to pay out the €300,000 because the party can't put up collateral to cover possible demands for a repayment of the money. The party has had to repay state funds before because of previous accounting irregularities.

"Of course it's an existential crisis if the Bundestag wants to cut us off from party financing," Voigt said on Sunday on the sidelines of a regional party conference in the eastern state of Saxony.

The NPD has responded to the Bundestag's decision by filing a legal complaint with the Berlin administrative court.

According to SPIEGEL, NPD lawyer Carsten Schrank wrote a letter to the court detailing the desolate state of the NPD's finances.

According to the letter, the party headquarters has monthly outgoings of €110,000 for office, staff and telephone costs, and income of just €30,000 in the form of membership subscriptions and donations. The €80,000 shortfall can only be made up with government funds. The party's "political existence is under threat," the lawyer writes.

The party denied it was on the brink of insolvency. "Of course the NPD isn't bankrupt, it will only have to strongly limit its administrative activities," the head of the NPD's legal department, Frank Schwerdt, said in a statement on Monday.

He added that withholding the €300,000 payment was unlawful, and that the alleged accounting irregularity for 2007 was "simply a matter of interpretation."

With reporting by SPIEGEL staff