For Saarland, an anomaly arose in the key figure system for the year 2023 due to a special effect that does not represent a budgetary burden, which now triggers a review of the budget situation by the evaluation committee.
Finance Minister Jakob von Weizsäcker explains the background: "The Saarland is responsible for the federal government and all states for the collection of VAT from Luxembourg. Within the framework of this so-called One-Stop-Shop procedure (OSS), revenue of 0.4 billion euros was generated through a back payment in the last quarter of 2023. As scheduled, this 0.4 billion was passed on to the federal government and the states in the first quarter of 2024 within the framework of VAT distribution and financial equalization. Thus, it is a pure pass-through item, which, however, is not correctly recorded as such in the key figure system and is solely responsible for the statistically identified anomaly of the year 2023."
To avoid a cross-year distortion of the budget situation caused by this multi-year issue, the state credited the additional revenues of 2023 to the economic stabilization reserve and then withdrew them again in 2024. Although the indicator system adjusted for the additional tax revenues, the allocation to the economic stabilization reserve was incorrectly recorded as a normal expenditure. This regulatory gap has now led to a review of the budget situation by the evaluation committee appointed by the Stability Council.
Adjusted for this pass-through item, the view of the actual budget situation of the state in 2023 emerges, according to the finance minister: "Without the OSS-related additional revenues and the associated forwarding to the federal government and the states, Saarland would have recorded a financing balance of +178 million euros and a net repayment of 139 million euros in 2023. Both values would obviously have been unremarkable. This comparison shows that the calculation rules in the key figure system are imperfect. What was recorded here was not a budget problem of Saarland, but a statistical artifact. The pass-through item alone is the cause of the observed anomaly."
The Stability Council has agreed to this finding, subject to review by the evaluation committee, said the Finance Minister, who also pointed out that the matter is presented in detail in the Saarland Stability Report. The subsequent review by the committee in the procedure will confirm this result for the year 2023.
Link to the 2023 Stability Report:
https://www.saarland.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/mfw/Task_Force/Stabilit…
Background
The Stability Council is anchored in Article 109a of the Basic Law. Further legal foundations of its work are the Stability Council Act, the Financial Equalization Act, and the Budget Principles Act. The chairmanship of the Stability Council is jointly held by the Federal Minister of Finance and the chairperson of the Conference of Finance Ministers of the Länder.
The chairpersons alternate annually at mid-year in leading the meetings. From July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, the Federal Minister of Finance will chair the meetings of the Stability Council. Afterwards, the chairperson of the Finance Ministers' Conference will take over the meeting leadership for one year.
