The state of NRW is partially reclaiming Corona emergency aid. The administrative courts in Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Gelsenkirchen have ruled that the reclamation is unlawful.
The federal and state governments wanted to quickly and unbureaucratically support companies, self-employed individuals, and freelancers with financial aid during the Corona pandemic. For example, North Rhine-Westphalia launched an emergency aid program in the spring of 2020 to financially support small and medium-sized enterprises, solo self-employed, and freelancers. In the meantime, the financial aid is partially being reclaimed by the state. The administrative courts in Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Gelsenkirchen have ruled that the reclamations are unlawful and have upheld the claims of the affected parties, explains the business law firm MTR Rechtsanwälte.
Since the Corona aid was meant to flow quickly, extensive checks of the claims were largely dispensed with. Later, however, the state initiated so-called feedback procedures. In this process, the responsible district governments determined the so-called liquidity shortfall of the benefit recipients during the approval period based on their revenues and expenditures. Only this shortfall should have been covered by the emergency aid, and amounts beyond that need to be repaid.
Many affected parties successfully defended themselves against the reclamations, from self-employed event technicians, operators of beauty studios or fast-food restaurants, to a tax office.
As the VG Gelsenkirchen, for example, stated, the provisionality of the aid payments was neither evident from the application form nor from the approval letter or the respective state website, that the payments were conditional. Whether anything to the contrary arises from the state of NRW’s funding guidelines is not relevant since they only appeared on May 31, 2020, and thus after the approval letters were issued. The VG Cologne further clarified that while payments can be conditional, this must be clearly stated in the approval letters. Any ambiguity is at the expense of the authorities, according to the LG Cologne.
The courts also pointed out that the final decisions were unlawful because the state of NRW only considered the liquidity shortfall for calculating the emergency aid. However, the approval letters provide for the use of the aid payment to also compensate for revenue losses. The state is bound to this.
Hundreds of cases are still pending in the courts. The judgments show that there are good chances to defend against the reclamations. Experienced attorneys can support you.
