German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF have appealed to the country’s Constitutional Court to raise the fees citizens need to pay for their operations.
Currently, every German household has to pay €18.36 each month or around €220 per year for public broadcasting, regardless of whether they watch it or even own a TV set. This translates to a yearly fee income of around €9 billion for the state media companies.
On November 19, ARD and ZDF asked the Court to raise this contribution by 3.2 per cent to € 18.94 per month from January 1, 2025.
The public broadcasters argue that the latest increase was necessary to safeguard the financing of the stations and therefore their journalistic independence.
Commentators in private media are more critical. “They are confusing freedom of broadcasting with their supposed right to high salaries,” wrote Michael Hanfeld of the newspaper FAZ on November 19.
State TV and radio stations pay high wages to their directors. A 2022 study found that top personnel had an average annual salary of €250.000,- with top earners making more than €430.000 per year.
Kai Gniffke, head of ARD since 2023, has an annual salary of €360.000,- in total – about the same as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The constitutional complaint by the broadcasters came after the heads of the 16 German states had decided to leave the tax unchanged in October.
The local leaders also agreed on a reform of Germany’s public broadcasting landscape, which is supposed to include a reduction in the number of TV stations.
Germany’s state media sector is one of the largest in the world. In 2023, it comprised more 20 TV broadcasters and more than 50 radio stations. State TV is widely accused of using its tax-funded might to push a far-left agenda, as documented by several watchdog organisations such as ÖRR Blog.
The heads of the states are reportedly unhappy with the constitutional complaint.
On November 21, Markus Söder, President of Bavaria, told ARD and ZDF to moderate themselves. Experts have said they believed the public broadcasters may well be successful in court.
The household tax is set by a complicated mechanism in which a commission (KEF) of 16 supposedly independent experts determines how much money public broadcasters need. The heads of the states then decided on the actual amount. The demanded increase is in accordance with the recommendations of the commission.
ARD and ZDF have launched a successful constitutional complaint before, in 2021, when the state of Saxony-Anhalt had tried to oppose an increase in the TV tax from €17.50 to the current €18.36.
