End the allocation of ministries to Berlin and Bonn
The taxpayers’ association warns of new costs due to the division of the federal government between the Berlin and Bonn locations. The reason: In the coalition agreement, the SPD, Greens and FDP not only announce that they “stand by” the Berlin/Bonn Act of 1994, which stipulates the division of ministries between the cities on the Rhine and on the Spree. The traffic light coalition partners also promise that the federal government will “conclude an additional contractual agreement with the Bonn region and the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate”.
This is unacceptable for the taxpayers’ association. “For years we have been calling for the Berlin/Bonn Act to be scrapped in order to put an end to the expensive and inefficient division of government,” says Reiner Holznagel, President of the Taxpayers’ Association. But the traffic light government now wants to “put further tax money into the economically good region of Bonn, despite the self-provoked imbalance of the law”. Ten million euros should flow from the federal budget this year just for the preparatory work for the preparation, coordination and negotiation of the supplementary agreement.
However, 23 years after the Bundestag and the federal government moved from Bonn to Berlin, it is time to end the distribution of the ministries between two cities. In any case, the Berlin/Bonn Act has become obsolete because the requirement that the majority of jobs in the federal ministries should be retained in the federal city of Bonn has long since not been met. According to the Federal Government’s report on the costs of partitioning, which provides information on the expenditure of the double seat of government every two years, more ministerial officials have been based in Berlin than in Bonn since 2008. In the meantime, 71.3 percent of civil servants worked on the Spree, only 28.7 percent in Bonn. With the Federal Ministry of Justice, one government department no longer even has any posts in Bonn.
The move cost the equivalent of around ten billion euros
Background: The Berlin/Bonn Act of 1994 was intended to legally implement the decision of the Bundestag of June 20, 1991 that the Federal Government and the Bundestag move their seat to Berlin.
At the same time, the law stipulated that “overall, the majority of jobs in the federal ministries should be retained in the federal city of Bonn”. The cost of the move was limited to 20 billion Deutschmarks, the equivalent of around ten billion euros. This also included financial compensation for the Bonn region. The law also stipulates that numerous federal institutions will relocate their headquarters – and thus jobs – to Bonn, including the Federal Audit Office, the Federal Cartel Office and the Postbank. 1999 measures Bundestag and federal government on their work in Berlin. There are now 16,854 ministry employees in Berlin and 6,784 in Bonn, based on the number of posts in each case.
The Federal Building Ministry is defending the planned supplementary agreement to the Berlin/Bonn Act. “The compensation agreements based on the Berlin/Bonn law, which was passed in 1994, have been largely implemented,” said a spokeswoman. Bonn and the adjoining region “accepted the challenges and managed the changes positively”. However, “in view of the political and social changes, there are new requirements for the distribution of tasks between the two cities and new challenges for Bonn and its region,” said the spokeswoman.
The designation of Bonn as a federal city in the Berlin/Bonn Act makes it clear that Bonn, as the second political center of the Federal Republic, takes on important tasks. “An additional contract should therefore define future priorities and tasks,” said the spokeswoman. The agreement is intended to “benefit the entire Federal Republic”. Therefore, the Federal City of Bonn and the region would have to “name key issues for future investments and make it clear which functions are important for our state and will be built” in the negotiations. “For example, investments in Bonn as the location of the United Nations, as a center for international cooperation, which we need more than ever in view of international wars, or in the science, technology and culture location,” said the spokeswoman for the Ministry of Construction.
Funds were set aside for the conceptual design
In the first step, funds amounting to ten million euros “for the conceptual design of the additional agreement” were set aside in the 2022 budget. In a whole series of talks between the partners, according to the information, “the main topics are to be defined,” according to the spokeswoman. “We’re now working on a viable concept together,” she said. According to the spokeswoman, it is not yet possible to say to what extent further funds are to flow in the Bonn region. “Now is not the time to start speculating about further funding,” she said.
As expected, the signals from the traffic light government were received positively in Bonn. “Thankfully, the Federal Building Minister responsible for the additional agreement to the Berlin/Bonn Act, Klara Geywitz, has agreed to negotiate the key points for such an agreement with Bonn and the region by autumn 2023 and has already held initial talks on this,” explained the city’s press spokeswoman , Barbara Loecherbach. For the region of Bonn/Rhein-Sieg/Ahrweiler/Neuwied, the additional agreement represents “essential support and strengthening of the federal government,” said Locherbach. “The common goal of all opportunities will be to keep Bonn as the second federal political center and to expand it further.” The federal, state and regional governments would negotiate the specific projects in the second half of the year.
The division of the ministries into Bonn and Berlin caused costs of 3.26 million euros last year – around 5.9 million euros less than two years earlier. According to the federal government’s report on the cost of sharing, the decrease in costs is mainly related to fewer business trips during the Corona period.