The city council unanimously decided that the administration should continue along this path. Bonn's legal position and that of the other plaintiff municipalities Much and Velbert has "deteriorated". Nevertheless, there are "still possibilities for argument which are not affected by the ruling", writes the city's court representative, lawyer Christian-Dietrich Bracher from the Bonn law firm Redeker Sellner Dahs, in an assessment for the city.

According to the census of Bonn's population, the State Office for Information and Technology (IT.NRW) corrected the number of inhabitants downwards from 327,503 in 2011 to 309,869 at the end of 2012. The bottom line is a minus of 17,634 inhabitants with severe consequences. Because the state transfers around 700 Euro a year to the city for each citizen to pay for tasks taken over by the municipalities, Bonn received around 12.34 million Euro less from 2013 onwards. By the end of this year, the amount will add up to 74 million Euro, which are missing in the already hard-pressed city purse.

Samples only

The city has lodged an appeal against the census decision and the allocation decisions until 2018, as well as a constitutional complaint against the NRW Municipal Financing Act of 2017. The main point of criticism was that, unlike the 1987 census, only small municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants actually surveyed all households.

In larger cities such as Bonn, the survey was left to random sampling and then extrapolated. While many smaller cities and municipalities suddenly had more inhabitants, many larger cities shrank considerably. However, the Federal Constitutional Court considers this procedure admissible. Current figures show how vulnerable this method is. For example, an evaluation of the Bonn Register of Residents as of December 31, 2017 reveals a population of 331,079. In contrast to this, IT.NRW only has an official population of 325,490 persons on the same day.

While in Bonn the number of people actually registered in the city at that time would be counted, IT.NRW would calculate the official number of inhabitants from the census result, added by the number of immigrants and births and subtracted by the number of departures and deaths, explains deputy city spokesman Marc Hoffmann. "Since the initial number of the population determined in the census was of the order of magnitude mentioned below that of the population register at that time, the corresponding difference persists at least until the next census survey.“

Withdrawal of lawsuits is not worthwhile

Attorney Bracher does not mention concrete starting points for the continuation of the proceedings to advice and administration. He writes: Arguments against the decisions "could result on the one hand from the fact that the census implementation specifications may already have been deficient or on the other hand from the fact that errors may have occurred in the further processing of the collected data by the State Statistical Office (IT.NRW)".

Even if the chances of success dwindle, from the point of view of politics and administration a withdrawal of the complaints would still not be worthwhile. On the one hand, the Administrative Court of Cologne set the amount in dispute for the fee notices at only 5,000 Euro. The court costs amount to 2628 Euro at the most. On the other hand, the court representative negotiated lump sums and has so far received fees of 26,000 Euro, Hoffmann explained on request. Because Bonn, Much and Velbert conducted the lawsuits together as pilot proceedings, the costs are also shared. In no year has Bonn therefore had to pay more than 1000 Euro net in lawyer's fees, he assures.

Original text: Martin Wein

Translation: Mareike Graepel