What is the current state of the railway system? Anyone who is currently boarding a train will get a good picture. The delay in long-distance trains is at a record level. Many construction sites slow down the trains. And passengers read the momentous message “repairs on the train” much more often than they would like. In the meantime, however, not only the passengers are losing their patience. Even the most important control authority of the federal government has now burst its collar.
On Wednesday, the Bundestag received a 33-page special report from the Federal Court of Auditors, the clarity of which cannot be surpassed. The examiners draw a really desolate picture of the group, its management, but also how politicians deal with the railways. “DB AG is developing into a bottomless pit,” says the conclusion of the paper Süddeutsche Zeitung present.
Because “although the federal government is providing more and more financial support to DB AG, the group’s debt has increased by five million euros since 2016,” the auditors calculate. Namely: per day. The mountain of debt has now grown to more than 30 billion euros and is increasingly restricting Deutsche Bahn’s room for manoeuvre. Nevertheless, the railway board is demanding more and more money from the federal budget, the pressure on the federal government is growing “to support the DB AG restructuring case more and more financially”.
With its report, the Court of Auditors is primarily targeting the management around CEO Richard Lutz. “You also have to ask the questions of how to deal with such a management achievement,” says Court of Auditors President Kay Scheller, suggesting personnel cuts to politicians. “We are of the opinion that decisions have to be made.” After four obviously lost years, the railway system had become even more unreliable and the economic situation even worse. The railway is finally in a “permanent crisis”, the report analyzes.
There is also criticism of the significantly increasing salaries of the board of directors
The auditors also massively criticize the group in detail. Not only in long-distance traffic every third train is late – “a negative record”. Local and freight transport is also getting worse and worse. The foreign subsidiaries would tie up resources and lead to losses.
Programs such as “Strong Rail” and “Deutschlandtakt” are – like many other announced solutions – “a largely ineffective empty phrase”. The federal government should no longer accept these “malfunctions”. Fundamental reforms are now necessary so that the “railway system can fulfill its role in transport and economic policy”. The clearly rising salaries of the Bahnspitze would not stand in any well comprehensible relation to the business development.
But the federal government and its transport minister are not doing well either. The federal government is far too passive, the auditors complain. A basic strategy is missing. The Minister of Transport must finally determine what kind of track and how much track he wants and at what cost. The Ministry of Transport announced last year that it would enforce federal interests more strongly. But so far that has not happened enough. Deutsche Bahn uses this deficit and continues to expand into international business.
Is under heavy pressure: The head of Deutsche Bahn, Richard Lutz.
(Photo: IMAGO/Christian Marquardt)
The examiners are now urgently admonishing the Bundestag for a turnaround. “Germany cannot afford a railway in the long-term crisis,” says Scheller. The government must now lose no more time. Especially since the funds are getting scarcer. “Every euro has to be there,” says Scheller. The problems have even increased in number and urgency.
The Federal Court of Auditors is therefore calling for a more far-reaching rail reform than the traffic light coalition has planned so far. The authority is in favor of detaching the railway network from the public limited company. So far it is only planned to give the network more freedom within the AG. The Federal Court of Auditors, on the other hand, calls for greater control over the rail network. He had to think about a completely new organization of the railway.
The background to the massive criticism is that the auditors fear that the changes announced by the traffic light coalition could remain too half-hearted. One and a half years of the new government have already passed without any further important steps, according to the authority. If the government does not introduce any major reforms, this electoral term will also pass unused. In any case, the President of the Court of Auditors is certain: “Something has to happen. We all feel it in everyday life.”