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Maillist Members may be interested to learn that the current severe political crisis in Germany involving the German Christian Democratic Union is closely linked to restitution law.

Yesterday, the conservative party leader and whip, Wolfgang Schäuble, announced that he will not stand again in forthcoming elections to both positions within one day after the president of the German parliament had announced that he subjects the CDU to a 41 Million DM restitutionary claim for public funds received during 1999 in violation of the CDU's duty to submit full financial accounts under §24 Parteiengesetz (Political Parties Act) on the ground that its branch organisation in Hesse had hidden away some DM 17 Million in accounts in Liechtenstein.

An English translation of the Political Parties Act is published in the German Law Archive at: http://iuscomp.org/gla/ statutes/ParteienG.htm

While the restitution claim for DM 41 Million paid out in 1999 follows from the statute itself (§ 20 subs. 3, § 23 subs. 4), and while this claim will not bankrupt the party, its future is, to a large degree, in the hands of the general law of restitution. For it is primarily this law which will have to decide whether and to which extent the CDU is obliged to return a few hundred more millions of DM on the ground that this party has presented similarly false accounts since the early 1980ies - claims which, if allowed in full, would in all likelihood bankrupt this party. Constitutional law aspects will have a role to play in this (notably the principle of proportionality, which I think off the cuff has not previously been applied to restitution claims), but it is nevertheless remarkable what restitution law can do to a country and to one of its two main political parties.

Gerhard Dannemann

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Dr. Gerhard Dannemann
Erich Brost University Lecturer in German Civil and Commercial Law
University of Oxford

http://iuscomp.org