Financial sovereignty

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Financial autonomy in the financial constitution , the powers that finance their own responsibility and without influence by third parties to settle.

General

In general, all have economic agents own financial sovereignty, exceptions are subsidiaries of companies in insolvency located companies / individuals and incapacitated persons . All other economic entities such as companies, other associations of persons or private households have their own financial sovereignty. They make autonomous decisions about their finances ( corporate financing , private financial planning ).

But of financial sovereignty is spoken of above all in the financial management of the state and its subdivisions. Here the state exercises sovereignty , i.e. state authority , over state finances . This financial sovereignty exists at all government levels, in Germany at the federal level , with the states and with the municipalities or municipal associations . They all have the right to their own revenues (federal level: federal taxes , state level: state taxes and local levels: local taxes and shared taxes , which all three authorities proportionally entitled). In addition, they are empowered to determine their own expenses and manage their own assets .

Bearer of financial sovereignty

All institutions or public institutions that have their own or a derivative financial sovereignty are responsible for public finance . So there is financial sovereignty

The federal and state governments have their own financial sovereignty , while the other corporations only have a derivative financial sovereignty .

These regional authorities exercise their financial sovereignty autonomously, because according to Art. 109 GG the federal government and the states are independent in their budgetary management and independent of each other (own financial sovereignty). According to Art. 104b GG, the federal government can grant the federal states financial aid for particularly significant investments by the federal states and municipalities / associations of municipalities, which are necessary to ward off a disturbance of the macroeconomic equilibrium or to balance out different economic power in the federal territory or to promote economic growth . This also applies to natural disasters or extraordinary emergency situations which are beyond the control of the state and which have a significant impact on the state's financial position.

tasks

The financial sovereignty consists of the tax legislative sovereignty ( Art. 105 ) GG, the tax revenue sovereignty ( Art. 106 GG) and the tax administration sovereignty ( Art. 108 GG). According to constitutional law , the financial sovereignty includes the taxation sovereignty , tax legislation , financial administration and financial jurisdiction . While the Basic Law tacitly presupposes the state's tax sovereignty in relation to the citizen, it primarily regulates in Art. 104a GG to Art. 108 GG the distribution of legislative, revenue and administrative powers with regard to taxes in the relationship between the federal government and the states and communities.

Specifically, the financial sovereignty deals with the income and expenditure policy in the context of state finances as well as asset management (e.g. federal asset management by the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks ). To this end, the institutions exercise budget law through their parliament , i.e. the Bundestag with the federal government, the Landtag with the federal states or the municipal council for the municipalities. In the assessment rate law , the financial autonomy of the municipalities is particularly clear.

International

The European Union has, apart from a partial income and spending power, no independent financial sovereignty. In spite of the far-reaching and complex tasks that have been assigned to the Community in Art. 2 TFEU and Art. 3 TFEU, it has no real financial sovereignty. The ECJ in its judgment of February 1995 in the financial sovereignty of the EU member states strongly intervened by demanding to have their powers in the field of direct taxation consistently with European Union law must exercise.

While the financial sovereignty in federal states is usually regulated in a similar way to Germany, the regions of a central state do not have their own financial sovereignty. In France , for example, the tradition of centralism has no financial sovereignty of the departments or regions .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alpmann Brockhaus, Fachlexikon Recht , 2005, p. 521
  2. ↑ Bodo Leibinger / Reinhard Müller / Herbert Wiesner, Public Finance , 2014, p. 28
  3. ↑ Werner Sixt, Der Gemeinderat in Baden-Württemberg , 2009, p. 65
  4. ↑ BVerfGE 55, 274 , 301
  5. ↑ BVerfGE 55, 274, 301
  6. ↑ Uwe Brandl (Ed.), Praxiswissen für Kommunalpolitiker , 2008, p. 189
  7. ↑ Josef Isensee / Paul Kirchhof (eds.), Handbuch des Staatsrechts: Volume XI: Internationale Bezüge , 2013, p. 1002
  8. ↑ ECJ, judgment of February 14, 1995, Az .: RS C-279/93 - Finanzamt Köln-Altstadt v Roland Schumacker = ECJ WM 1995, 1081