Transparency Rules Widen to State-Owned Companies in Berlin

Companies owned by the state for 50 per cent or more fell under the same transparency regulations as public bodies, according to a ruling by the Berlin Administrative Court. Previously, the freedom-of-information regulation had applied only to companies owned by the state for 70 or 80 per cent.

The Hoffest request

The case was triggered in 2008, when Tageszeitung journalist Sebastian Heiser filed a freedom-of-information request about the sums given by sponsors of the annual Hoffest in Berlin. The Hoffest was a gathering in the city hall's inner courtyard, to which the incumbent mayor — in this case Klaus Wowereit — traditionally invited about a thousand prominent guests: politicians, entrepreneurs, actors, officials and other well-known figures. There had been demonstrations near the Hoffest under the motto "Wasser statt Wein" ("water instead of wine"), calling for less money to be spent on parties and more on the city's employees.

The court's reasoning

Heiser's request was directed at Berlin Partner GmbH, a company majority-owned by the state of Berlin that had recruited the Hoffest sponsors. The company did not grant the request, on the grounds that the sponsorship sums should be viewed as trade secrets that the public had no right to know. The Court, however, ruled against the company, arguing that the demonstrations and the extensive media coverage of the Hoffest were valid proof of a significantly broad public interest in the sponsorship information. In its ruling the Court stated that the state of Berlin's press laws included legal persons such as limited liability companies operating in the public sector, the only precondition being that the private entity was dominated by the public entity — meaning all companies majority-owned by the state.

A precedent from Frankfurt airport

The Court based its decision on a ruling the German Constitutional Court had made the previous year, in a case where citizens had organised a demonstration in the entrance hall of Frankfurt airport against noise pollution. The Constitutional Court had ruled that the airport entrance hall was not to be seen as private property, because the state of Hessen and the city of Frankfurt together owned slightly more than half of the shares in the airport company Fraport AG, thereby making it public space in which demonstrations were allowed.

What the documents revealed

Although the Hoffest case took three and a half years to reach a close, the results remained relevant. After examining the sponsor list, Heiser found the biggest sponsor to be the wholly state-owned Berlin cleaning-service company, which had contributed 14,900 euros, despite repeated claims by mayor Wowereit that no tax money had been "directly" used to fund the Hoffest. The Berlin public transport company had sponsored 7,900 euros. "Both are loss-making companies that balance their books with money from the treasury every year", said Heiser. "Had they not sponsored the Hoffest, then they would have needed less money from the treasury, so be sure that that money was indeed taxpayers' money!" The wider question of whether public money spent through state-linked firms should be visible also arose over the real price of nuclear power in Belgium.

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