Legal topics
Procedure regarding additional financing contributions for Stuttgart 21
At the end of 2016, in order to avoid risks under the statute of limitations, we initiated proceedings in the Stuttgart Administrative Court against the project partners seeking additional financing contributions on the basis of what is known as the negotiation clause. The project partners gave a comprehensive response to the lawsuit in Spring 2018. DB Group has now responded to the statement of defense. In the course of the response, the lawsuit was extended. This was based on the increase in the total value to € 7.7 billion at the time. Following the repeated increase in the total value to € 8.2 billion, the lawsuit will be extended once again. The Stuttgart Administrative Court gave the project partners the opportunity to reply to the response by the end of April 2020. The project partners have applied for, and been granted, an additional deadline extension until the end of August 2020. It is likely that this delay will also have an impact on the Stuttgart Administrative Court’s original consideration to schedule a hearing in the fourth quarter of 2020. As a result, we currently assume that there will no longer be a hearing date this year. A verbal hearing on the lawsuit is, therefore, likely to take place in the first half of 2021.