Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) had repeatedly threatened, now he is getting serious: In view of the constant record payments, Bavaria will sue the state financial equalization. The cabinet decided three months before the state elections on Tuesday in Munich, as Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) announced at noon. The lawsuit is to be filed in Karlsruhe before the parliamentary summer break.
“It needs more money at home,” he said. Bavarian money is better off in Bavaria than in Bremen or Berlin. He feels the system is deeply unfair, said Söder. “We have now paid 100 billion and received three billion.” From the high contribution that Bavaria pays, other federal states afforded “things that we can’t afford”.
Bavaria bears 53 percent of the total burden of fiscal equalization, said Söder. The scissors have widened massively, fewer and fewer countries are paying more and more money to most of the federal states. Bavaria demands upper limits for recipients and a change in the city-state regulation. Because that means that Bremen is better off per capita than Bayern after the equalization.
“We are and will remain in solidarity, but not naive,” repeated Söder. He had said the sentence several times in connection with the state financial equalization.
“The injustices in the current equalization system are quite obvious,” added Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU). Bavaria would have liked to negotiate further, he said, but the result was to be expected if few countries financed many countries. It is now time to have the structures checked.
Söder and the state government had long announced the constitutional complaint against the equalization system, which is now officially called the financial power equalization of the states. The opposition accuses the CSU and the Free Voters of pure “campaign noise”. “We want to reform the state financial equalization and relieve the Bavarian taxpayers,” Söder wrote on Twitter in the morning. Bavaria now pays almost ten billion euros to other federal states every year. “The Free State will no longer accept these dimensions, which is why we are suing – it can’t go on like this!”
The current eleven recipient countries and Rhineland-Palatinate, which only recently became a donor country, criticized Bavaria’s lawsuit. Lower Saxony’s Ministry of Finance announced that the decision was taken with great regret. Because only with the financial equalization would the conditions be created to maintain the equality of living conditions and public services nationwide.
As part of the financial equalization between the 16 federal states, around 18.5 billion euros were redistributed last year. With payments of almost 9.9 billion euros, Bavaria again bore by far the largest burden – the Free State alone accounted for more than half of the redistributed money. According to the statement by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Baden-Württemberg paid almost 4.5 billion euros, and Hesse paid 3.25 billion euros. Hamburg contributed around 814 million euros and Rhineland-Palatinate around 107 million euros. Eleven countries, on the other hand, benefited from compensation payments. Berlin was the largest recipient with around 3.6 billion euros.
In 2013, Bavaria – together with Hesse – had already filed a lawsuit against the state financial equalization system at the time. At that time, too, the lawsuit was decided within sight of the Bavarian election. The two states then withdrew their lawsuit in 2017 after the financial relations between the federal and state governments had been reorganized. The system is now called financial power equalization. It serves the goal enshrined in the Basic Law of creating equal living conditions in Germany. Unlike back then, Bavaria is alone with its lawsuit this time – although Söder’s counterparts from Baden-Württemberg and Hesse also consider the current equalization system to be in urgent need of reform. The Bavarian Greens also recently acknowledged the need for reform – but see the lawsuit as a “signal of lack of ideas” and “campaign roar”.
Söder justified the lawsuit – otherwise nothing would move. But he also referred to a “right of termination” in 2030 that had been agreed. From today’s perspective, that would “definitely happen”, also on the part of Hesse and Baden-Württemberg. Lower Saxony’s Finance Minister Gerald Heere (Greens) said: “We are obviously dealing with a Bavarian election campaign.” It is all the more important that the majority of the countries stand together in solidarity and stick to the existing equalization system.