[ad_1]
Friday 02 October 2020
The toll committee has to wait until just before midnight, when Transport Minister Scheuer finally shows up. Before the Bundestag committee, he defends his approach to the toll bill and disputed the allegations of the prevented operators.
Federal Minister of Transport Andreas Scheuer has rejected the operator’s accusations in the commission of inquiry into the toll of the failed car. In a conversation in November 2018, “as I recall,” the operator did not make any offer to postpone the signing of the toll contracts until the ruling of the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ), Scheuer said Friday night. in front of the Bundestag commission. With this, Scheuer renewed his previous information to the Bundestag.
At the meeting with the heads of the operating companies CTS Eventim and Kapsch TrafficCom on November 29, 2018, “there was absolutely no reason” to “talk or think about such a matter,” Scheuer said. In the negotiations on the offer of the operating consortium with the Ministry of Transport, the two parties were still widely separated at that time. An agreement was not yet in sight. Also, in late 2018 it assumed that Germany would win the car toll procedure before the ECJ, emphasized Scheuer, who only testified shortly before midnight.
In November 2018, Scheuer spoke with the heads of the companies that were awarded the contract to collect the car toll at the end of 2018. The ECJ had canceled the car toll in June 2019 because it hurt foreign drivers. Scheuer is therefore accused of having concluded the contracts before legal certainty existed.
In the commission of inquiry, Scheuer defended the termination of the contracts with the companies that operate the automobile toll immediately after the negative ruling of the ECJ. “We could not be satisfied with the state of implementation,” said the CSU politician. The verdict “unfortunately left no air” to make changes to the car toll system, Scheuer said, so that the toll is ECJ compliant.
Operators load Scheuer a lot
Before Scheuer’s statement, the operators of the planned toll pool had greatly burdened the minister. The head of consortium partner CTS Eventim, Klaus-Peter Schulenberg, said that in the November 2018 conversation, also in view of open funding issues, he offered to wait until the ECJ ruling before signing the contract. Scheuer decidedly rejected the offer. The head of the second partner of the Kapsch consortium, Georg Kapsch, confirmed this representation on the committee.
Former Secretary of State at the Transport Ministry, Gerhard Schulz, had recently supported Scheuer with his testimony on the inquiry committee. According to his report, at the meeting on November 29, 2018, there was no “concrete offer” from the operator to postpone the signing of the contract. Rather, Scheuer tried to persuade the toll consortium to come up with a new and cheaper offer.
The opposition accuses Scheuer of lying in the Bundestag in September 2019. Scheuer confirmed the statement he made at the time that postponing the signing of the contract was not an issue at the November 2018 meeting. The reasons for the termination are important for an ongoing arbitration process between Autoticket shareholders and the federal government. The companies claim compensation of 560 million euros. The federal government strictly rejects it, noting that the company would not be entitled to claims in the event of termination for various reasons.
