“No director should earn more than the Chancellor,” says Finance Minister Lindner. He calls for the boardrooms and administrations of the broadcasters to be streamlined.
Berlin – Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner has criticized the salaries of the directors of public broadcasting. “At the top of the public service, the money is sometimes enormous,” said the FDP politician to “Bild am Sonntag”. “I’m against any envy debate, but no director should earn more than the Chancellor. A self-commitment is necessary here in order to be economical with the money of the fee payers.”
In addition to his government office, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) also has a parliamentary mandate and therefore receives a 50 percent reduction in parliamentary remuneration in addition to his official salary. According to figures compiled by the Bundestag’s scientific service on behalf of an AfD member of parliament in the summer, the chancellor’s total monthly salary is around 30,000 euros, i.e. around 360,000 euros a year.
The station bosses of the ARD do not determine their salary themselves, but the board of directors as control bodies. In the ARD directorial comparison, WDR director Tom Buhrow earns the best with more than 400,000 euros per year – WDR is also the largest ARD broadcaster. The director of the Saarländisches Rundfunk (SR), on the other hand, is at the lower end of the annual salaries of the ARD directors according to information for 2021 with around 245,000 euros. The information relates to the basic remuneration.
“Overall, the executive floors and administrations should be leaner in order to pay the editors who make the content appropriately instead,” Lindern continued in the “Bild am Sonntag”.
A few days ago, the minister also commented on public service broadcasting and spoke out in favor of receiving the broadcasting fee. He is a defender of the fee model, he said on Tuesday at the congress of the Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) in Berlin.
An alternative would be financing from the state budget through taxes. But that would put journalism in a situation in which the budget committee would have an influence on the structures, Lindner warned. He does not consider France’s recent decision to abolish broadcasting fees to be transferrable to Germany. dpa
