Parties and Money: Are All Politicians Bribable?

The article deals with the current problem of the financial scandal of CDU. In the beginning the author describes factual circumstances of the affair, then goes on putting some key questions: Why do we need political parties? Why do these parties need money? From what sources do the parties obtain money? In what way the emergent state of affairs should be solved? Is it necessary to amend laws? Answering these questions, the author defines main functions of political parties (participation, transmission, selection, integration, socialization, self-regulation and legitimization) and presents main sources of incomes of political parties - both from the state budget and from the private sector. He uses description of the expenditures of the parties to graphically show for what purposes the parties need funds (party apparatus, funding of election campaign); moreover, he digestedly demonstrates a development of the legal regulation of the party funding. He also notes the development has been strongly influenced by decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court. When answering the final question, i.e. how to solve the present state of affairs, the author primarily accentuates the problem of the party funding does not exclusively lie in the current legal regulation, but in a necessity to change legal consciousness.