2023-07-05 16:47:26
The failed car toll is expensive in Germany. After an arbitration procedure, the Federal Republic has to pay 243 million euros in damages, as the German Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) and the Austrian toll operator Kapsch TrafficCom announced on Wednesday. In the summer of 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) overturned the plans pushed by the conservative CSU because the planned tax discriminated against foreign vehicle owners.
The Austrian toll specialist Kapsch and the ticket marketer CTS Eventim, who founded the joint venture autoTicket for the toll, had received billion-euro orders to collect the fee and issue the electronic toll vignette. After the ECJ overturned the German toll plans, they originally demanded around 560 million euros in damages in the arbitration proceedings. The companies and Germany had agreed to the settlement proposal of the arbitral tribunal, CTS Eventim said on Wednesday.
The 243 million euros should therefore be paid to the company Autoticket – the joint venture of the toll specialist Kapsch and the ticket provider Eventim should be the operator of the car toll. With the payment, “the mutual claims from the operator contract would be settled and compared,” explained Kapsch. The comparative agreement is expected to be finalized and drafted in the coming days and thus take effect.
The car toll was a prestige project of the conservative CSU, which wanted to prevent an additional burden on German drivers. The German concept therefore stipulated that all users should initially pay the toll. However, domestic vehicle owners should be relieved of at least the same amount of vehicle tax, so that the bottom line is that only foreign owners would have had to pay. The toll should actually be levied from October 2020 and bring in 500 million euros on balance.
Because of the rain of money from the arbitration proceedings, Kapsch raised its forecast. The company now expects a significant improvement in the operating result (EBIT) in the 2023/24 financial year with sales growth in the single-digit percentage range. Until now, Kapsch had only expected a slight increase in earnings. In the past fiscal year, Kapsch earned just 7.6 million euros before taxes and interest.
Minister of Transport Wissing described the damages due of 243 million euros as a “bitter sum”. At the same time, the FDP politician said in Berlin on Wednesday that the federal government had done damage limitation. Originally, more than 700 million euros in damages were claimed. Wissing called the failed car toll a serious mistake. He regrets that the amount of damages is not available for infrastructure investments. Wissing said the arbitral tribunal proposed a termination by award. The Budget Committee of the German Bundestag gave the go-ahead on Wednesday for the arbitral award to be approved.
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