Thuringia hosted the German Unity Day celebrations this year. For three days, the state capital Erfurt offered a variety of events. The country spent a lot of money on it.
Erfurt (dpa/th) – The central celebrations for the Day of German Unity in Erfurt have cost Thuringia several million euros. In view of tens of thousands of visitors on the first weekend in October, Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (left) considers the expenses to be justified. “What we carried out of Thuringia this weekend was the feeling and the image of how much we have grown together over the past 32 years,” Ramelow said on request.
At the end of the festival, he “went home deeply satisfied. “The Day of German Unity was a complete success for our Free State,” said Ramelow, who will also be President of the Bundesrat until the end of October. The state traditionally organizes the celebrations, which chairs the chamber of the federal states Thuringia will be followed by Hamburg in November.
In Erfurt there was a public festival from October 1st to 3rd and on Unity Day itself there was also a ceremony to commemorate the reunification of Germany in 1990. According to the Thuringian State Chancellery, around 185,000 people attended the festival, around 120,000 visitors were expected. “Everything we thought of – be it the fantastic offers at the festival or the design of the ceremony – was accepted with great enthusiasm,” said Ramelow.
According to a spokesman for the State Chancellery, it is not yet possible to definitively and precisely quantify how expensive the celebrations were overall. “The amount of the actual total costs can only be shown reliably after the accounting and billing of all individual services,” he said. This has not yet been completed.
However, according to the first calculations by the State Chancellery, it is already clear that a single-digit million amount will have to be spent from the state budget to finance the celebrations. For the years between 2020 and 2023, the State Chancellery initially estimated a total of around five million for Unity Day.
In the current year, a further 1.4 million euros have been made available for this purpose due to significant cost increases in the security and events area in order to cover the foreseeable additional costs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs also provided another 100,000 euros to support Thuringian artists who took part in Unity Day.
These expenses are offset, among other things, by sponsorship income of around 250,000 euros and a federal subsidy for the implementation of the protocol events of a maximum of 250,000 euros, said the spokesman. “According to the current status, the Thuringian State Chancellery assumes that the available funds are sufficient for the overall settlement.”
