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A win for the energy company Vattenfall, a brake on the federal government: compensation payments for nuclear phase-out must be completely reorganized; the previous law is unconstitutional.
By Bernd Wolf, ARD Legal Editor
The word “sloppy” has likely been used several times in the constitutional judge’s consulting room. His decision on the Vattenfall lawsuit leaves nothing to be desired in terms of clarity.
Federal government procedural error
It’s also not often that a legislator makes a law and it never goes into effect due to sloppy work.
The way the federal government at that time implemented nuclear phase-out is unconstitutional and the Swedish utility company Vattenfall has violated its fundamental right to property. Because: The compensation rules, as prescribed by the Federal Constitutional Court in its ruling on accelerated nuclear phase-out after Fukushima Gau in 2011, never came into force, due to procedural errors by the government.
Extension of the withdrawal period
On St. Nicholas Day 2016, Karlsruhe declared nuclear phase-out to be permissible in principle. The condition: the legislature must regulate in an amendment to the Atomic Energy Law for 2018 which energy supplier receives how much compensation for which nuclear power plants paralyzed, on the one hand for lost profits and on the other hand for useless investments.
Because in September 2010, shortly before Fukushima in March 2011, the then black and yellow federal government decided to extend the term of the nuclear power plant by many years. After the reactor disaster in Japan, it quickly withdrew the controversial shelf life extension.
Unclear law
In 2016, the Constitutional Court issued a ruling with the condition that the Legislature compensate the plant operators. These initially expected almost 20 billion euros.
The ruling grand coalition passed a law in 2016, but made the most serious procedural errors: a necessary statement was not obtained from the EU Commission, the sums were too indefinite, and the date of entry into force was unclear. Politicians only spoke of a small sum of one billion single digits.
For Vattenfall, judgment is success
Vattenfall sued again, successfully. The First Senate under Chief Justice Stephan Harbarth says: The legislature is still required to make new regulations as soon as possible to eliminate violations of fundamental rights.
Vattenfall welcomes the constitutional court’s decision and can now hope to obtain money for its decommissioned Krümmel and Brunsbüttel nuclear power plants through new constitutional legal regulations.
In another lawsuit before the World Bank’s International Court of Arbitration (ICSID) in Washington, Vattenfall is demanding another five billion euros in damages for the 2011 nuclear phase-out.
