Unification costs: good chances for lawsuit by nrw municipalities

The state constitutional court in munster on tuesday criticized the calculation bases according to which the costs are distributed between the state of nrw and the municipalities. They are not legally comprehensible, said the president of the constitutional court, michael bertrams.

91 cities and municipalities went to court against the country. But this is not about the solidarity pact as such. At the heart of the matter is the question of who has to pay how much in NRW. The lawsuit is directed against a law passed by the dusseldorf state parliament in 2010 during the time of the black-yellow government. The court will hand down its verdict on 8. May fall – five days before the NRW state elections.

The legal dispute is based on a complicated system according to which the uniform burdens of municipalities and states throughout germany are distributed according to economic strength. In this system, there are debits and credits. For example, in view of the costs of reunification, the federal states were granted more participation in sales taxes. However, large parts of this rough distribution formula are not reflected in the disputed NRW law. The cities and municipalities are therefore denouncing the fact that the state is claiming costs for itself that are not actually incurred.

The mayors of some NRW cities recently criticized the solidarity pact, which runs until 2019, and claimed that they had to take out loans to make the payments. This exacerbates the already serious financial problems of many municipalities. As a result, they had to cut further services for the citizens, massively increase fees or save on expenditures, for example, for road rehabilitation.