User:Andig88/State subsidies to the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches (Germany)

State subsides (Staatsleistungen) are obligations of the states to the churches based on laws, contracts or legal titles. These are defined by the state-church law (Staatskirchenrecht) also known as religion-constitutional law (Religionsverfassungsrecht) and were already in place when the Weimar Constitution came into force on the 14. August 1919. All obligations of the government to religious groups that were introduced after this day are not part of the state subsidies according to the Basic Law and constitution of 1919.

In Germany state benefits contribute a minor amount to the overall funding of the church in addition to church taxes and other subsidies. In 2019, the German states with the exception of Hamburg and Bremen paid about 549 million euros to the religious communities. According to the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), the state benefits amount to an average of 2.6 percent of the total church income.

The state benefits arose in some German regions due to the secularization of church property, especially in connection with the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803. With the secularization of assets the new secular rulers became legal successors of the previous religious regents and incurred the obligations of lifelong maintenance and the construction fees for churches. Some German states pledged to compensate the religious societies with for annual payments (positive state benefits) and / or tax exemptions for religious societies (negative state benefits). Since 1919, the is a constitutional mandate for the final termination of state subsidies by a one-time replacement.

Legal basis
The state benefits to the religious communities are regulated in Art. 138 (1) of the Weimar Constitution, which according to Art. 140 GG is part of the Basic Law and therefore applicable constitutional law. Therefore state benefits existing at the time of the entry into force of the Weimar Constitution to the religious societies are to be redeemed by the state legislatures with a one-off compensation.

According to Art. 138 sec. 1 sentence 2 Weimar Constitution, the principles for replacement must be set by the German Reich, today the German Bundestag. This constitutional mandate has not been fulfilled since 1919. The Federal Government, according to its answer to a question from the parliamentary group DIE LINKE on 9 April 2014, does not see any need for action for the enactment of a Basic Law, which could provide the federal states with the framework for the replacement of their state services, despite the unconditional constitutional mandate. As a result, state benefits continue to be payable until their replacement. It does not matter whether state services merely constitute a duty of the state or whether it also faces a subjective right of the respective community.