VfGH: Termination of the 2020 winter season in accordance with the law
Coronavirus
The abrupt end of the tourist winter season in March 2020 in the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic was legally compliant. This was decided by the Constitutional Court (VfGH). The Salzburg State Administrative Court had previously complained that the end of the winter season had not been adequately documented.
Specifically, the Constitutional Court dealt with the ordinance of the St. Johann im Pongau district authority, which was announced on March 13, 2020 and came into force three days later, the “Salzburger Nachrichten” reported on Tuesday.
With this ordinance, the “closure of cable car operations and accommodation facilities to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2” was ordered. At that time, around 180,000 holidaymakers stayed in Salzburg. The hotels in the mountains were about 90 percent full and the Ischgl case had just become known.
State Administrative Court requires examination
A whole series of hoteliers subsequently sued for loss of earnings under the Epidemic Act, and these proceedings ended up at the Salzburg State Administrative Court. During the review, the judges began to doubt whether the district authority’s order to close was even legal. The act contains an instruction from the state to issue this ordinance based on ready-made models, “which is why there is a lack of adequate documentation of the basis for the decision”.
The State Administrative Court therefore requested that the Constitutional Court confirm the illegality.
VfGH: Decision documented well enough
For the Constitutional Court, the abrupt end of the winter season violated, but not against applicable law. The reasons for the closure of the cable cars and accommodation did not necessarily have to be given in the ordinance file of the district administration if they were already documented in the file of the person issuing the instructions – in this case the state of Salzburg – according to the decision made by the APA.
In addition, consideration had to be given to what was possible and reasonable in the specific situation. “The contested ordinance was issued during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 and about COVID-19 was correspondingly limited,” the decision is further quoted as saying. Against this background, the documentation in the state’s directive is sufficient.
Constitutional Court decision as a precedent
The Supreme Court also stated that it no longer dealt with the same applications in 15 other cases because the legal issues had already been clarified by the current decision.