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The G7 participants at the so-called family photo at Elmau Castle
Photo: IMAGO/Political Moments
A castle on the mountain shielded by 16 kilometers of fence, a press center with 3,000 journalists in the valley, numerous trips for preparation and follow-up: the G7 summit at the end of June at the Bavarian castle of Elmau involved enormous effort - and high expenditure.
The federal government is likely to have incurred costs of at least 113.5 million euros as a result of the meeting and the German G7 presidency.
This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of Finance to a request from the left, which SPIEGEL has received.
"The chancellor presented himself to the world public for 113.5 million euros," says Gesine Lötzsch, budget politician for the left.
That is “a lot of money for a PR campaign”.
30 million euros alone have already been budgeted for in the 2022 budget for the costs of the Federal Press Office.
A good 23 million of this goes to an event agency and the implementation, 3.8 million to security costs and 1.2 million to the rental of the media center in Garmisch.
The other items include IT costs (1.1 million euros), rent and catering for a briefing center in Elmau (1 million euros), a corona-compliant hygiene concept (almost 600,000 euros), a website (155,000 euros) and the development of the Logos including a so-called style guide (120,000 euros).
Since the individual items exceeded the original estimate, another five million are planned for financing in the budget for 2023.
"It is currently assumed that the estimate is sufficient, although the exact amounts will of course only be known after full accounting," writes State Secretary Florian Toncar (FDP) in the answer.
In addition to smaller items, the list includes a further 25 million, with which, among other things, interpreters, experts and typists were paid, as well as an item of 50 million, which was planned as a flat-rate cost sharing at the summit.
The costs of the Bavarian hosts are also to be reimbursed from this pot.
Dispute with Bavaria
But how high will the reimbursements be to Bavaria and other federal states that took part in the alignment with security forces?
“The Federal Government does not have any calculations of its own for this detailed question,” says the answer.
The question of cost allocation had already led to conflicts in advance.
Bavaria estimated the total costs in advance at 188 million euros and after the meeting demanded that the federal government take on a higher share than previously promised.
At the first G7 summit at Schloss Elmau in 2015, the federal government reimbursed Bavaria a flat rate of 40 million euros, the total costs were estimated at around 133 million euros at the time.
