Distance from the state
Under state distance refers to the relational distance between a State and a legal entity . In Germany, the term is mainly used in connection with public broadcasting .
Corporations under public law not attached to the state
Sometimes the state confers the status of a corporation under public law to organizations that do not perform state tasks but are part of society. The main purpose of this is to give the organization a special reputation in recognition of the work that has been done. The fact that these organizations are under public law, but not part of the state, has a wide range of effects, for example in relation to questions of fundamental rights , state supervision , public procurement law , official liability and the applicability of official offenses .
By virtue of the Basic Law, religious and ideological communities are non-state corporations under public law. This special status was justified in the so-called Weimar Church Compromise of 1919, which the Basic Law adopted as constitutional law.
For more information see corporation under public law (Germany) #Staatsferne corporations under public law .
broadcast
For public broadcasters and state media companies (according to the prevailing view today, the latter do not belong to the indirect state administration, but rather are rooted in the social sphere), only limited legal supervision is permissible due to the constitutional principle that broadcasting is not from the state .
The Federal Constitutional Court issued twelve judgments (as of 2012) on freedom of broadcasting . In the 1st broadcast judgment (February 28, 1961) it rejected the establishment of Deutschland-Fernsehen GmbH as incompatible with the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (GG).
The "Causa Brender" in 2009 led to a public discussion about how and how strongly political parties exert or try to influence ZDF via the ZDF board of directors. (More in the article ZDF Board of Directors # Criticism ). On March 25, 2014 the court ruled u. a .: "[t] he share of state and state-affiliated members may not exceed a third of the legal members of the respective body."
In Austria , in 1964, outside the parties (the ÖVP and SPÖ ruled continuously in a grand coalition from 1945 to 1966), a radio popular initiative supported by newspapers was launched. The aim was to free state broadcasting (later: ORF ) from the proportional representation of the large parties or from government dependency. The huge support this popular initiative received from the people prompted the government under Josef Klaus in 1967 to carry out a broadcast reform in accordance with the intentions of the request. The journalists were temporarily released from political tutelage.
In Italy , Silvio Berlusconi , media entrepreneur and long-time Prime Minister, systematically exerted influence on the Italian media landscape (especially that of the TV stations) and ultimately on their programming (see e.g. Silvio Berlusconi # Conflicts of Interest ).
Others
The lack of distance from the state played a role in the prohibition proceedings of the right-wing extremist party NPD (see Party ban # requirements and NPD prohibition proceedings (2001–2003) ).
In the 19th century there were some societies in which the state was a night watchman state ; there was self-regulation of large parts of the economy and society outside the state.
literature
- Jutta Stender-Vorwachs: “ Distance from the state” and “Distance from groups” in an externally pluralistically organized private broadcasting system. Dissertation, University of Regensburg 1987
See also
Web links
- FAZ.net October 15, 2013: It is time to deal with the question of whether broadcasting is still remote from the state, as the broadcast-friendly Federal Constitutional Court ideally sees it (comment by Reinhard Müller)
- Matthias Cornils : Radio remote from the state as a prerequisite for democracy. - The constitutional problem of broadcasting supervision . Lecture given on September 5, 2012
Individual evidence
- ↑ The dispute over ZDF editor-in-chief Brender escalates Welt Online from November 26, 2009
- ↑ BVerfG judgment of March 25, 2014
- ↑ Jürgen Kocka, Bourgeoisie in the 19th Century: Unity and Diversity of Europe , page 40.
- ↑ Look inside the book
- ↑ Information on Prof. Cornils