A 2.5 billion euro terminal and the usual bill for taxpayers

On paper, it is just another public project. In practice, it is the sort of bill that makes one wonder whether anyone ever still asks what something is for before deciding to build it. On 1 October, the German Taxpayers Association presented its new Black Book of wasteful public spending in Berlin and listed 100 example cases. The headline case is the planned second government terminal at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, where costs could climb to as much as 2.5 billion euros.

That sum is not a rounding error. The airport already has a government terminal, and it is already used for flights by the federal government. Yet a second one, described as more representative, is still being planned. Back in 2019, the estimate was 344 million euros. Since then, the project has swollen into a figure that is difficult to reconcile with any sober idea of necessity.

The German Taxpayers Association argues that government air traffic should be guided by functional need, not by prestige. That sounds obvious, which is usually a sign that public construction has drifted a long way from common sense. The association is not alone in taking aim at the wider habits that produce such projects: cost increases, weak planning and the familiar reflex to spend because money is available.

BER is only the most expensive example in the new list. In Schwerin, the planned Landesgartenschau for 2035 carries a volume of 83 million euros and, according to the association, a significant risk of losses. Garden shows, it says, regularly become vehicles for prestige projects, while the later costs stay with the municipalities after the beds have long been planted and forgotten.

Kassel offers its own lesson in how ambition and arithmetic can part company. The German Tapetenmuseum there is costing almost 35 million euros. Costs rose, the opening was delayed, and annual spending for operations and staff will amount to 620,000 euros. Before the project was launched, there were no visitor forecasts. One may call that optimism. Others might prefer a less charitable term.

In Schleswig-Holstein, teachers received almost 35,000 new laptops. Around a third were never switched on, which leaves 6.7 million euros spent on technology that remained unused. Mannheim, meanwhile, built a foot and cycle bridge with a 50-metre span and a wooden structure that is anything but standard. The bridge cost around 9 million euros, and the city could afford it because the federal government covered the full amount.

Reiner Holznagel, president of the German Taxpayers Association, sees a recurring pattern behind these examples. In his view, subsidy programmes make it attractive for public bodies to join projects simply because money is available and might otherwise lapse. He says spending decisions are too rarely made according to need, economic efficiency and impact, and that the results are fatal.

That is the uncomfortable point of the Black Book. Waste is not merely a string of isolated mishaps. It is what happens when public money is treated as a resource that must be spent, not justified. The association’s list suggests a system in which prestige, subsidies and poor discipline meet far too easily — and taxpayers are left with the invoice.

Written by Martina Kirchner martina.kirchner@alpineweekly.com