ZDF board of directors

In addition to the ZDF television council, the ZDF board of directors is a further supervisory body at the Second German Television (ZDF), which monitors the activities of the director, particularly with regard to budget issues. Together with the artistic director and at his suggestion, he appoints the program director, the editor-in-chief and the administrative director.

Its composition was decisively changed after a regulatory review decision by the Federal Constitutional Court. Party political influence should thus be reduced. Since the term of office in the summer of 2017, a new board of directors has been composed according to the new regulations.

Members since summer 2017

The Board of Directors consists of twelve members, including four representatives from the federal states, which, according to the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court, corresponds to the maximum number of state representatives. Another eight members are elected by the television council. You must not belong to any government or legislative body. A maximum of one third of the members may be “close to the state”.

The election of the chairman and his deputy takes place according to the rules of procedure of the administrative board from among its members. Since July 1, 2017, the Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, Maria Luise Dreyer (SPD) (member since July 1, 2017 as a representative of the federal states) has traditionally held the chair.

The three other representatives of the federal states are: Stanislaw Tillich (CDU) (since April 1, 2011), Markus Söder (CSU) (since February 7, 2019) and Dietmar Woidke (SPD) (since February 6, 2019).

Members of the board of directors elected by the television council are:

Gabriele Beibst , Rector of the Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule Jena , on the Board of Directors since July 1, 2017
Bärbel Bergerhoff-Wodopia , member of the board of directors of the RAG-Stiftung , on the administrative board since July 1, 2017
Reinhard Göhner (CDU), former Managing Director of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations , on the Board of Directors since June 29, 2012
Peter Heesen , Honorary Chairman of the DBB Beamtenbund and Tarifunion , on the Board of Directors since July 1, 2017
Michael Sommer (SPD), former DGB Chairman, on the Board of Directors since April 1, 2016
Martin Stadelmaier (SPD), former head of the State Chancellery Rhineland-Palatinate , has been on the administrative board since July 1, 2017
Barbara Thomaß , Professor at the Ruhr University Bochum , on the Board of Directors since July 1, 2012
Birgitta Wolff (CDU), President of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main , on the Board of Directors since July 1, 2017

criticism

In the course of the "Causa Brender" in 2009, there were heated discussions about the influence of political parties on the board of directors. Immediately after the board meeting in which his personnel proposal was rejected, ZDF director Markus Schächter declared with a view to legal clarification that the federal states had the duty to “ensure that the ZDF has a reliable legal basis”. ZDF TV Council Chairman Ruprecht Polenz made a similar statement . The Chairman of the Board of Directors Kurt Beck subsequently proposed changes to the ZDF State Treaty, for which he did not find a majority among the state governments. Finally, Beck announced the state of Rhineland-Palatinate's own lawsuit against the ZDF State Treaty at the Federal Constitutional Court , which was sent to Karlsruhe in December 2010 in the form of a regulatory review application . The parliamentary group of the Greens had already submitted the draft for its own norm control application at the beginning of 2010, which only the parliamentary group of the Left joined, whereby the necessary quorum of 156 members of the Bundestag was not achieved. The draft of the Greens envisaged a much more far-reaching withdrawal of state representatives from the ZDF committees than the lawsuit brought by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The state chancelleries of Rhineland-Palatinate and Hamburg complained that too many people and institutions close to the state were represented in the ZDF's supervisory bodies. Ferdinand Kirchhof , Vice-President of the Constitutional Court, pointed out that the Basic Law forbids public broadcasting to be “instrumentalized” for state purposes. That state representatives are not allowed to be represented in the supervisory bodies cannot be deduced from this. Kurt Beck admitted that there were cases in which “concentrated political influence” had taken place.

Judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court

In March 2014, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that "the regulations on the composition of the administrative board in accordance with Section 24 ZDF-StV [...] violate Article 5 (1) sentence 2 of the Basic Law". The court obliged the federal states to adopt a new constitutional regulation by June 30, 2015 at the latest, which limits the proportion of “state-related” board members to thirty percent.

The constitutional judge Andreas Paulus formulated a different opinion in this judgment: the participation of even a third of representatives of the executive branch contradicts the principles of the judgment. "If the supervisory bodies of radio and television are controlled by those whose control they are supposed to enable, among other things, their function is impaired." Paulus criticized the judgment of his chamber colleagues as "a utopian, hardly verifiable standard for the exercise of the issued mandate ”for the ZDF bodies.

literature

Stefan Holzner: Discussion report from the Mainz Media Forum: "ZDF and the freedom of the state of broadcasting" , news service MMR-Aktuell issue 4/2010, MMR-Aktuell 2010, 299963.
Stefan Holzner: Another norm control procedure for the ZDF State Treaty announced , Newsdienst MMR-Aktuell issue 5/2010, MMR-Aktuell 2010, 301001.