Thousands of small business owners and the self-employed are suing in North Rhine-Westphalia against the reclaiming of emergency corona aid by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In three pilot proceedings, the Düsseldorf Administrative Court has now upheld the recipients of the emergency aid and overturned the final decisions of the Düsseldorf district government with their claims for repayment of thousands of euros as unlawful. However, the court expressly allowed an appeal to the Higher Administrative Court. The presiding judge Nicola Haderlein said that the application forms and the approval notices for the Corona emergency aid were worded in a misleading way. The applicants could have rightly assumed that the benchmark for the emergency aid would be their loss of sales and not – as the state only clarified weeks later – the losses incurred as a result of the pandemic. “Obscurities are always at the expense of the authorities, not the recipient. That’s just the way it is,” said the judge. The topic is currently making waves. Around 500 lawsuits on the subject of emergency corona aid are pending before the Düsseldorf administrative court alone. According to Haderlein, there are even around 2,000 procedures nationwide.
Corona emergency aid – stage victory for solo self-employed – economy
