The Federal Ministry of Transport is examining claims for recourse against former Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) in the event that the car toll failed. That said a spokesman for Scheuer’s successor, Volker Wissing (FDP). However, it is not yet clear whether recourse claims will be asserted against Scheuer.
In the dispute over compensation for the bursting of the car toll, there was an agreement on Wednesday. According to this, the federal government will pay 243 million euros to the companies actually intended to operate the toll. Wissing spoke of a “bitter” sum and called the car toll a serious mistake. He regrets that the money to be paid is not available for investments.
Ex-Minister Scheuer, on the other hand, defends himself against one-sided blame. The toll was “neither a sole CSU nor a Scheuer project”, he told Bayerischer Rundfunk. Rather, the Federal Government, Bundestag, Bundesrat and Federal President had already passed the laws before he became Federal Minister. “It was my duty to then implement the law.” When asked how he responded to the criticism of him because of this million sum, Scheuer replied: “I can understand the resentment very well. This failed project annoys me most of all.”
Scheuer: “I’ve always delivered in large numbers and successfully”
The car toll was introduced primarily at the insistence of the CSU – under the then Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU). Scheuer then concluded the operator contracts at the end of 2018; half a year later, the European Court of Justice rejected the project as illegal. The federal government terminated the contracts with the intended operators a short time later, who demanded 560 million euros in damages. Eventually, arbitration followed.
The Greens member of the Bundestag Anton Hofreiter therefore finds: “I see Mr. Scheuer directly personally responsible for the failure of the car toll and thus also for the upcoming payments,” he said Picture. Scheuer must be held personally responsible. “One would also have to discuss greater personal financial liability, also in general in similar cases.”
Scheuer, on the other hand, does not want his term of office as federal minister to be reduced to the car toll. “I have always delivered in large numbers and successfully,” he told Bayerischer Rundfunk. For example, in the dispute over the truck toll in 2018, he negotiated a settlement with the operator consortium Toll Collect – in the amount of 3.2 billion euros in favor of the federal government.