Lawsuit for non-funding of the Sorbian/Wendish parliament well-founded

The supporting society SMY e.V. has now justified in detail its complaint against the refusal of funding for an office for the Serbski Sejm before the Administrative Court.

It states that the work of the Serbski Sejm is merely the logical implementation of findings that the State Foundation for the Sorbian People had obtained from expert opinions and working groups. With the Serbski Sejm, the effectiveness of the funds for Sorbian art, culture and language can be increased and the democratic deficits identified in expert opinions can be remedied; this is directly in the spirit of the founders, as expressed in the State Treaty on the Foundation. The state government had already obtained an expert opinion from the international law expert Prof. Kotzur before 1998, and in 2010 the Foundation convened a working group „Corporation under Public Law“ under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The result was that the representation of a people solely through an association cannot meet the requirements of international and constitutional law. Therefore, the foundation under public law was established as a minimum solution. However, since this did not solve the deficits, the working group confirmed in 2011 that a corporation under public law with its own parliament was suitable. If this was not politically desired, it called for urgent structural reforms of the foundation and Domowina. Although this has been discussed since 2011, nothing happened until the election of the Sejm in 2018 and since then. Domowina had tried to prevent this election.

Lawyer Baumann-Hasske represents SMY e.V. and explains: „This is probably the reason for the conflict. According to the funding mandate of the state treaty, the foundation has the duty to justify in the matter why it does not want to support the work of the Serbski Sejm.“