Hinaus aus der Selbstblockade – Ziele und Wege zur Reform des Förderalismus

Rudolf Hrbek summarizes the arguments for the project of reforming German federalism. He describes the positions adopted at the beginning of the work of the Reform Commission set up in fall 2003 by the federal government and the state governments respectively. The Commission ended with a failure; there were some reform proposals in single issues, but no comprehensive reform proposal. His article tries to identify reasons explaining the failure. Hrbek recommends a new procedural approach: instead of the Reform Commission composed by members who as office or mandate holders would be affected directly by reform measures, a Convention should be established composed of a smaller number of members (representing a broader range of actors: e.g. local level, Land-Parliaments, elder statesmen). A broad mandate should enable the Convention to elaborate a reform proposal as package deal which the two houses of Parliament would then have to decide on finally. A major political function of the Convention would be to generate a broad debate on basic features of a federal system and in the meaning of “unity in diversity”, as a prerequisite for modernizing German federalism.Martin T. W. Rosenfeld states that for more than fifty years, there had been many attempts to reform the German system of cooperative federalism and to reduce the power of the federal level of government. But, so far, no one of these attempts had been successful. In 2004, the “Commission on the Modernization of Cooperative Federalism” had worked out a proposal for reforming intergovernmental relations in Germany. Rosenfeld points out that from the view of the theory of fiscal federalism, this proposal may be regarded as a step in the direction of more efficiency – but just as a very small step. Unfortunately, the decision-makers of the federal and the state level of government did not come to an agreement on the proposed reform. With regard to the current distribution of costs and benefits which arise for the decision-makers from the existing institutions of cooperative federalism in Germany, this result is not surprising for him. In his opinion an agreement on reforming intergovernmental relations is only likely to be achieved if relevant external changes will take place.Gerhard Schick emphasizes that one of the weaknesses of the commission was that excessive debt of jurisdictions was not seen as one of the core problems of German federalism, even though the debt burden might endanger the very existence of at least some of the states. This omission reflects both individual interests of participants in the commission and the fact that neither proponents nor opponents of competitive federalism put forward convincing and politically viable solutions. According to him, a new reform will need proposals to overcome the debt problem that avoid raising fears of tax competition and that reflect the asymmetrical character of German federalism.