A funding dispute between the federal government and the states of Saxony and Thuringia regarding the costs of cleaning up environmental damage caused by former GDR state-owned companies remains unresolved at the Federal Constitutional Court. The highest German court rejected applications by the two federal states as inadmissible, according to information from Wednesday. They had not sufficiently demonstrated their right to file an application and had also not shown any constitutional obligation on the part of the Federal Republic of Germany to (proportionately) bear future costs for the remediation of contaminated sites. The Second Senate in Karlsruhe ruled that such an obligation had not been demonstrated either with regard to the Basic Law or unwritten constitutional principles. (Ref. 2 BvG 1/19 and 2 BvG 1/21)
The background to this are agreements made in the course of reunification. Former state-owned companies in the GDR were transferred to the federally owned Treuhandanstalt and privatized by the latter. In many cases, the Treuhand agreed indemnities with investors for environmental damage caused by these companies.
