Germany’s largest political parties have agreed on a parliamentary resolution requiring applicants for arts and science funding to explicitly reject anti-Semitism and recognise Israel’s right to exist.
After months of backroom haggling, the resolution – which is non-binding but comes with considerable political clout – is likely to be welcomed by Germany’s Jewish community when it is presented for a vote in September.
But critics see it as further evidence that Germany is engaged in curtailment of freedom of expression, guaranteed by article five of the postwar Basic Law.
Since the October 7th Hamas attacks, artists and scientists in Germany who have spoken out against Israel’s response in Gaza have reported cancelled projects and public funding.
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Some fear the new resolution – backed by the ruling coalition and the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – will have a further chilling effect.
A draft of the resolution seen by The Irish Times would require recipients of public funding to reject anti-Semitism “in accordance with the expanded IHRA definition of anti-Semitism”.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, one of two in widespread use, frames anti-Semitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”.
The definition has been adopted by Germany and 30 European countries, excluding Ireland.
Critics say the non-binding IHRA definition is problematic for citing Israel in six of its 11 examples of anti-Semitism.
The idea of a Bundestag resolution against anti-Semitism dates back to a 2022 controversy over paintings with anti-Jewish tropes shown at a leading German art show. The October 7th attacks gave the initiative added momentum.
With a final draft circulating, some legal experts wonder whether it will fare any better than a similar plan by Berlin’s city-state government. Last January it announced new rules requiring arts funding recipients to reject anti-Semitism and back Israel’s existence.
Weeks later Berlin dropped the measure, “due to legal concerns that [it] is not legally secure in this form”.
Germany’s federal culture minister Claudia Roth has yet to position herself on the new Bundestag resolution.
On Wednesday her office said the fight against “anti-Semitism, racism and all forms of misanthropy” required broad co-operation “in harmony with freedom of art”.
“Where necessary,” said a spokeswoman for Ms Roth to The Irish Times, “funding conditions must be specified in a legally secure manner”.
Last May, Ms Roth published a report she commissioned from one of Germany’s leading constitutional lawyers, which said conditions for state arts funding were legally possible. It warned, however, that imposing conditions similar to those proposed in the Bundestag anti-Semitism resolution were neither practicable nor advisable. This would require “the establishment of a supervisory structure that in turn is susceptible to abuse”.
The Bundestag anti-Semitism resolution reminds some of a 2019 parliamentary resolution condemning the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign as anti-Semitic and ordering funding cuts to any individual or organisations that “actively support” the campaign.
A year later the Bundestag’s internal legal service noted the resolution was not a law and, if it had been, “would not be compatible with the fundamental right to freedom of expression and would thus be unconstitutional”.
Though the Bundestag BDS resolution was non-binding, and expired with the last parliament in 2021, critics say it remains influential in German arts funding decisions.
Ahead of the Bundestag summer break, questions remain over who will oversee the new resolution’s implementation.
Last month Berlin’s state justice minister, Felor Badenberg, suggested the task of checking public funding applicants’ views should be handed to Germany’s domestic intelligence service.
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