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State Court of Justice in Wiesbaden: Consequential decision
Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst / dpa
Critics saw a shadow budget in the "Corona special fund" of the state of Hesse for a long time.
It is now clear: the special fund is unconstitutional.
That was decided by the Hessian State Court in Wiesbaden.
The court justified its decision.
There would have been other forms of crisis management.
The law on special assets is incompatible with the state constitution.
Now the government has to find a new solution to finance corona aid.
The state's loan-financed special fund has a total volume of twelve billion euros.
The purpose of the special fund is to mitigate the consequences of the corona crisis.
The loans can be taken out until the end of 2023, for example to offset tax losses for the state and municipalities.
Members of the parliamentary groups of the SPD and FDP had submitted a norm review application to the State Court of Justice in November 2020 against the corresponding law "Secure Hesse's good future", the AfD parliamentary group in March of this year. The reason for the step was that the law violates budgetary constitutional principles, the budget law of the state parliament and the prohibition of new borrowing. So it is unconstitutional.
The Hessian state parliament had decided on the financing model in the summer of last year with the votes of the government factions of the CDU and the Greens.
Before it was passed in parliament in Wiesbaden, there had been very tough debates for weeks.
The opposition vehemently rejects the special fund and has been speaking of a shadow budget ever since.
Instead, there is still a demand to rely on supplementary budgets to cope with the corona costs.
Politicians have to find a new solution
Finance Minister Michael Boddenberg (CDU) last spoke of a return to economic stability in Hesse when presenting the draft budget for the coming year.
As a result, the expenses from the Corona special fund were significantly lower for the next two years.
Instead of the possible twelve billion euros, the country will therefore possibly only need just under nine billion euros.
So far, according to the Ministry of Finance, 296 concrete aid for more than 5.9 billion euros has been initiated from the loan-financed special fund.
Hessen is already starting to repay the funds in the current year.
The court is now giving the Hessian government a grace period in order to find a regulation for the financing of the aid that is compatible with the state's constitution.
"Until a new regulation, at the latest until March 31, 2022, the provisions declared incompatible with the constitution of the State of Hesse continue to apply," the court said in a statement.
mic / dpa-afx
