One will be able to assume that Gerhard Schröder is concerned with the principle. The former Federal Chancellor fought three court instances to finance the office and employees from the federal budget, but that will not have been due to the money – he should have earned really well after the end of the chancellorship in 2005. The Federal Administrative Court has now decided on the dispute this Thursday. Result: The administrative courts are the wrong address for the legal dispute. Only the Federal Constitutional Court could decide on any rights and obligations of an former Chancellor.
Schröder himself had not come to Leipzig for negotiations, which had taken over his lawyers. One of the curiosities of the process includes that the real reason for the withdrawal of the loved equipment of his old chancellor did not play a role in court. Schröder, who is one of his friends Vladimir Putin, had been criticized after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 because he did not want to move away from this friendship. The SPD tried without success to throw it out of the party. Four of his employees asked for transfer.
In May 2022, just three months after the start of the war, the budget committee reacted to the former chancellor’s stubbornness. He found that Schröder “no longer perceived an obligation from the office” and put the office “resting”. Schröder went to court, but administrative and higher administrative court rejected his lawsuit.
The core of the dispute revolved around the question of whether Schröder could therefore claim an office with staff because this was also held by the predecessors and his successor. In fact, the Federal Republican generosity increased in the equipment of former heads of government over the decades. Konrad Adenauer had to be satisfied with a speaker position from the federal budget, and there was also a secretary financed by the CDU. Ludwig Erhard also received a speaker and a secretary from the Chancellery in 1966. Shortly afterwards a driver was added. Helmut Schmidt had already reached seven places at Helmut Kohl, and there were just as many at Schröder until 2019; Most recently he had four employees. Angela Merkel even has nine employees.
However, nowhere was it really clear on which legal basis this equipment was actually granted. There are no legal rules, only decisions of the budget committee. The exact purpose also remained open for a long time. Should personnel and office be a kind of upscale pension? Gratitude for services achieved? Or were former Chancellors with one foot in office? It was only with the decision of 2022 that the committee brought the “continuing official obligations” into play.
The Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg, which had previously decided on the lawsuit, worked on the question of whether Schröder could derive habitual law from state practice in terms of customs office or a right to equal treatment. The court denied this with the somewhat formalist justification, which the scope of the equipment has inferior to significant fluctuations – no common law can be borne up on this. At the same time, the court suggested that the matter at the administrative court was not quite correct. What a Chancellor can and what he can claim has rather constitutional character, it said.
This is how the Supreme Administrative Court in Leipzig sees it: If it is about a post -effectively constitutional role of an former Chancellor, the dispute must be held before the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. “Disputes about specifically constitutional rights and obligations of the top state organs are not assigned to specialist jurisdiction,” said the Federal Administrative Court.
This means that the dispute is set to zero, so to speak. Because the Federal Administrative Court has not decided on whether such rights and obligations can really be derived from the Basic Law – and whether this also includes an old Chancellor’s office including staff. That would now have to be clarified in Karlsruhe.
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