Hamburg finance senator criticized for awarding start-up funding

Did the Hamburg Finance Authority fund an accelerator because a manager is close to the ruling SPD? At least this is the accusation made by the opposition.

The CDU and the Left Party are accusing Hamburg's Senator for Finance Andreas Dressel (SPD) of favoring the Next Media Accelerator (NMA) in the allocation of funding. According to information from the Süddeutsche Zeitung the finance authority waived a Europe-wide tender for a start-up funding contract and gave the Next Media Accelerator nine million euros in funding. The accelerator is intended to attract fintechs to Hamburg.

The opposition parties now want to know how the contract was awarded and accuse Dressel of awarding the contract in line with SPD party policy. NMA manager Nico Lumma is a member of the SPD party executive's media and network policy committee and knows Finance Senator Dressel personally. He is also a co-founder of the digital policy association D64, which is also close to the SPD. The red-green Senate rejects the accusations.

In a transparency announcement, the Hamburg tax authority cites the fact that no other competitor met the city's mandatory criteria as the reason for its decision. In addition, the authority was under time pressure to award the contract because the funding would otherwise have expired unused.