Expensive Vollbremsumg at the car toll | ' | '
The failed car toll has cost the federal government more than 50 million euros. From 2014 to the toll decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) a week ago, an amount of exactly 53.601.435 euros ran up, as shown by a report of the Ministry of Transport to the Bundestag.
By contrast, the amount that was scheduled to be in the federal budget until 2023 – and now disappears – is almost twenty times as high. Around one billion euros in toll revenue should flow into the financing of transport routes. To this gigantic hole in the financial tailor it succinctly in the department report: How the loss of revenue affects the federal budget, will still be examined.
Schmallippige information
Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) has to face the questions of the competent Bundestag committee on Wednesday. MEPs should be particularly interested in what the taxpayers are paying now.
Because in addition to already incurred expenses and projected loss of income still lurks a third item: The companies that were purchased for the proposed toll, have written compensation clauses in their contracts. Here, too, the ministry's paper is tight-lipped: Whether and in what amount the federal government would have to compensate the operator, was "currently purely speculative."
Read and be silent
The contracts themselves are kept under wraps. It is true that MPs are allowed to see the un-blackened agreements with the toll system provider Kapsch and the ticket vendor CTS Eventim at the secret protection office of the Bundestag. But they are forbidden to speak publicly about it.
End of a CSU prestige project: Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (archive image)
The companies had already received the surcharges for the collection and control of the toll at the end of 2018. The SPD and opposition had criticized this as premature, since the judgment of the ECJ had not yet fallen. The CSU had enforced the car toll against considerable concerns with CDU and SPD in the grand coalition.
From the judgment "surprised"
The Ministry is now defending its report that the contracts have been closed at this early stage so as not to jeopardize the planned date for a toll on 1 October 2020. The ECJ ruling had come "surprisingly".
The EU Supreme Court had declared the car road toll unlawful last week, as it would penalize foreign drivers as planned. Directly after the judgment Scheuer had terminated the contracts with the toll operators. However, 82 of more than 400 posts that the federal government had earmarked for the toll have already been filled. The employees should now be moved to other places.
jj / ww (dpa, rtr)
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