Supplementary Agreement to the NATO Troop Statute

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The supplementary agreement to the agreement between the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty on the legal status of their troops with regard to the foreign troops stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany of August 3, 1959, or NATO troop statute supplementary agreement - NTS-ZA ( Federal Law Gazette 1961 II p. 1183, 1218 ), supplements the NATO Forces Statute of 1951. It was signed by the representatives of Belgium , Canada , France , the Federal Republic of Germany , the Netherlands , the United Kingdom and the United States of America .

It concerns the question of the stationing of foreign NATO - forces , including privileges , immunities , for example in the civil, administrative and criminal justice, social security, customs and tax liability or the driving of motor vehicles .

Todays situation

The supplementary agreement has been amended several times:

  1. by the agreement of October 21, 1971 ( Federal Law Gazette 1973 II pp. 1021, 1022 ),
  2. the agreement of May 18, 1981 ( Federal Law Gazette 1982 II pp. 530, 531 ) and
  3. the agreement of March 18, 1993 ( Federal Law Gazette 1994 II pp. 2594, 2598 ).

The article 3, paragraph 2 of the Supplementary Agreement to the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (ZA-NTS) specified by a series of agreements and in particular the agreement substantially amended on 18 March 1993 and the 1968/69 in view of the G 10 Act closed Administrative agreements were in effect until the beginning of August 2013.

According to Annex I, Chapter I, Section I, Numbers 5 and 6 of the Unification Treaty , the NATO troop statute and the supplementary agreement are also excluded from validity in the five new federal states . By exchange of notes ( BGBl. 1990 II p. 1250, 1251 , BGBl. 1994 II p. 26, 29 and BGBl. 1994 II p. 3714, 3716 ) it was agreed that since September 12, 1994 the troops in the new federal states will have the same rights with the exception that the German Federal Government must now approve this for each individual case.

In addition to the legal status of NATO troops, the Bundeswehr also has the right to station troops in other European countries , which is regulated by the EU troop statute of November 17, 2003 (OJ 2003 / C 321/02, BGBl. 2005 II p. 18 ) .

criticism

In Art. 3 Paragraph 2 - “The cooperation provided for in Paragraph (1) [between the German and the occupation authorities] extends in particular to (a) the promotion and maintenance of security and the protection of the assets of the Federal Republic, the sending states and the Troops, in particular the collection, exchange and protection of all communications that are relevant for these purposes; […]. "- ​​the historian Josef Foschepoth sees the permission to monitor post and telecommunications traffic for the Americans, among others, and criticized in an interview with the Badische Zeitung in February 2013 :

“On the one hand, what Brandt said, that the reservation rights have been replaced. On the other hand, that the supplementary agreement to the NATO troop statute is and will remain the basis for the Allied surveillance measures. Finally, that every Allied military commander is at liberty to take the necessary security measures to protect the troops, including carrying out surveillance measures for postal and telecommunications traffic. […] When the SPD wanted to know in the Bundestag in 1990 on what legal basis the American Special Forces were now working in Germany, they heard from the Minister of State in the Foreign Office about the 1954 residence contract and the supplementary agreement to the NATO troop statute. The allied right to monitor mail and telecommunications has not been suspended in either the old or the new Federal Republic. "

This provision in the Statute of Forces is in turn restricted by Paragraph 3b: "This paragraph does not oblige a contracting party to take measures that would violate its laws [...]."

According to Foschepoth, the additional agreement and another secret agreement of 1955 allow the Three Powers to intervene in the criminal prosecution system. If it is in the interests of the Allies, they could prevent relevant information from being made public in the course of criminal proceedings. In addition, the compulsory prosecution of the West German police had been lifted for people who were of interest to the Allies. Instead, the police had to immediately inform the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the American secret service so that they could interrogate the people and, if necessary, take them out of the country.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Act on the Agreement of March 18, 1993 amending the Supplementary Agreement to the NATO Forces Statute and on other agreements of September 28, 1994
  2. ↑ Josef Foschepoth: Surveillance Germany: Post and telephone surveillance in the old Federal Republic. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-525-30041-1 , p. 299 .
  3. ↑ a b Foreign Office (ed.): Troop stationing law , regulations on the troop statute and changes after 1993 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Press releases from the Federal Foreign Office on the expiry of the administrative agreements on the G10 law with the USA and Great Britain on the one hand and France on the other from August 2 and 6, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Josef Foschepoth: Monitored Germany , 3rd edition, Göttingen 2013, pp. 47–51.
  6. ^ Stefan Hupka: Historian Josef Foschepoth on the systematic breach of postal secrecy in the Federal Republic , Badische Zeitung of February 9, 2013.
  7. ↑ cf. also RA Thomas Stadler: Can the NSA monitor telecommunications in Germany? In: Internet Law. October 28, 2013, accessed August 15, 2014 .
  8. ↑ "The NSA is allowed to do anything in Germany" , Süddeutsche Zeitung of July 9, 2013.