The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty (FNF) is the German Foundation for Liberal Politics. Established in 1958 by Prof. Theodor Heuss, the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany, FNF promotes liberal values, above all the freedom of the individual for his and her pursuit of happiness.

People need personal liberty to develop their human abilities and potential fully, everybody has to be free to decide his course in life, what also means that we all bear responsibility towards society for our actions. We promote the creation of liberal democracies and open societies, which are based on the respect for human dignity and Human Rights, on democracy as the order of legitimizing and limiting the exercise of power, on market economy principles as the best order to create wealth and fight poverty, and on the Rule of Law as the basic prerequisite for protecting individual liberty, for limiting governmental executive power and to regulate conflicts in society.

The Foundation follows the ideas of Friedrich Naumann (1860-1919) who was a leading German liberal thinker and politician. He resolutely backed the idea of civic education. Friedrich Naumann believed that a functioning democracy needs politically informed and educated citizens. According to him, civic education is the fundamental prerequisite for political participation and thus for democracy.

FNF promotes liberal thinking and liberal policies in cooperation with her local partners through activities of civic education, international political dialogue, and political counseling. Our civic education activities consist of seminars, conferences and publications aimed at promoting liberal values and policies, the international political dialogue program provides a forum where mainly young politicians and cicvil society activists from all over the world meet. Political counseling is mainly given to liberal political parties in order to improve their programmatic basis, their strategic orientation and their political communication with citizens. We cooperate with political parties worldwide because we believe in party-based democracy.

The Foundation maintains a network of premises in Germany as well as offices in about 60 countries worldwide - in Eastern Europe, the Middles East, Africa, the Americas, and Asia. FNF maintains close links with Germany’s 'Free Democratic Party' (FDP) and 'Liberal International' (LI).
For the Foundation’s work, funds are obtained from the German 'Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development', from the German 'Foreign Office' and from the European Union.