Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung

Beiträge zum deutschen Föderalismus

Der Finanzausgleich zwischen Bund und Ländern als föderatives Sozialversicherungssystem

Henrik Scheller

S. 253-269

In 2004 the reform of the German Federalism was one of the main points on the political agenda as well as in academic debates. In October 2003 Bundestag and Bundesrat appointed a joint commission to develop suggestions for a modernization of the legislation process and the relationship between the federal level (Bund) and the German Länder. Many observers criticised the small agenda which the commission had from the early beginning on because there was a wide consensus that fiscal questions should be left out of consideration. So the fiscal equalization system was explicitly not part of the commission's negotiations because it had only been renewed two years before. But it seems to be improbable that the new Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations Act (Finanzausgleichsgesetz) will be in force until 2019 as was originally intended by both the chancellor and the governors of the federal states. This assumption bases on two arguments. Firstly the economic and fiscal situation of the Eastern German Länder is still very weak, even fifteen years after German reunification. Secondly three former Western German Länder (Bremen, Saarland and Berlin) have extremely high public debts so that they are no longer capable of fulfilling their constitutional obligations. Both kinds of fiscal problems underline the need for a general, fiscal equalization system which had been criticised very often in the past. Without such a system the general economic equilibrium which is stated in Article 109 of the German Constitution will be disturbed soon in a way which negatively impacts the relationship between the federal level and the Länder. This consideration leads us to the thesis that the fiscal equalization system has to be understood as a system of social security like, e. g., the pension scheme or the health insurance system. Following this interpretation this article points out striking similarities between the four mechanisms of the fiscal equalization system and the structural elements of the different systems of social security, which are all implemented in only one system. The results of our analysis offer a new impression of the transfer system and thus explain the difficulties which occur regularly in negotiations between the Bund and the Länder.

Zitiervorschlag für diesen Artikel:
Scheller, Henrik 2005: Der Finanzausgleich zwischen Bund und Ländern als föderatives Sozialversicherungssystem, in: Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2005. Föderalismus, Subsidiarität und Regionen in Europa, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, S. 253-269.