Compensation for operators
Failed car tolls can cost taxpayers millions
03/25/2022, 11:59 p.m.
Scheuer is no longer Minister of Transport, but may put great pressure on his hereditary treasury: an arbitral tribunal has now decided that operators who contracted skiers for failed car fares should claim damages from the federal government.
Failed passenger car fares can have costly consequences for taxpayers: as CTS Eventim and Kapsch TrafficCom cited the decision of the arbitral tribunal announcing that the truly operating companies are entitled to damages from the Federal Republic. The amount of the claim will be decided at the second round of arbitration which will follow.
Kapsch TrafficCom and CTS Eventim formed Autoticket GmbH, a joint venture for car fees. The car fee – CSU Valuable Plan – was declared illegal by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in June 2019. Intended operators are seeking 560 million in compensation after the federal government terminated contracts following the ruling. Arbitration proceedings continued as Andreas Skier, then Union Minister for Transport and Transport, rejected the claims. The arbitral tribunal confirmed that the claims asserted by AutoTicket GmbH were based on merit, the companies said. This emerges from the interim arbitral award sent to the operator parties.
Germany, represented by the Federal Ministry of Transport, was therefore not allowed to withdraw from the agreement “unilaterally and without compensation”. The arbitral tribunal also rejected the grounds for suspending the alleged poor performance by the Federal Republic. At the request of Volker Wissing, a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Transport, he said, “We have not yet decided. Once this is done, we will carefully examine and evaluate how to proceed.” There was a committee of inquiry in Bundestock during the last assembly session on the failure of car fees. The opposition at the time accused Shear of failing and blatantly violating the budget and public procurement law. Scheuer has always denied the allegations.
Operator contracts expire at the end of 2018
The final report of the Commission of Inquiry, submitted in the spring of 2021, stated that the risk of a complete failure of the car toll before the ECJ “should have been given more importance in risk assessment”. It was also determined that “lying, deliberate concealment or manipulation” by the Ministry or Minister could not be reliably proven.
The then opposition parties of the FDP, the Green Party and the Left and the AfD each submitted their own special comments with massive criticism of Scheuer. It was also his view that he would conclude operator contracts at the end of 2018, even before the final legal confirmation at ECJ. The U-Committee began work at the end of 2019 and asked Shearer to testify for two hours.