The Federal Ministry of the Interior, under Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), reported using the so-called Haber procedure 51 times last year, according to a ministry spokeswoman quoted by “taz” (Friday edition). This procedure involves having projects or individuals reviewed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution before receiving state funding. The ministry did not disclose the outcomes of the 51 reviews.
With 51 cases, the Federal Ministry of the Interior currently leads all ministries in the application of this procedure. “taz” had inquired about the last time the procedure was used across all ministries. According to the report, the Federal Ministry for Culture cited only one other instance, besides the bookstores nominated for the Book Trade Award, the details of which were withheld due to confidentiality reasons. The Ministry of Research spoke of “rare cases” in recent years.
The Ministry for Family Affairs and the Ministry of Economic Cooperation stated that funded projects were only recently vetted at the initial stage of the process-a matching against public reports from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Other ministries reported that they had not recently utilized the procedure.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior had failed to respond to an inquiry about the number of Haber procedures used recently over several weeks. Clara Bünger, Vice Chairwoman of the Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag, told the newspaper that a corresponding parliamentary inquiry she submitted on March 12th remains unanswered to date. Bünger stated to the newspaper, “Apparently, there is an effort to conceal how deeply the domestic intelligence service is now involved in funding decisions and award grants. This is an attack on parliamentary oversight and further proof that the Haber procedure must be abolished”. She added that they would not tolerate this “secrecy”.
The procedure gained public attention after it was revealed in March that Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer (non-partisan) used the Haber procedure to review three bookstores through the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which subsequently led to their removal from the shortlist for the Book Trade Award. The procedure is based on a 2017 decree from the Federal Ministry of the Interior and aims to prevent the allocation of state funding to extremists.