Bundesverfassungsgericht

You are here:

Costs

Pursuant to § 34 (1) of the Federal Constitutional Court Act, proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court are generally free of charge. No one should be deterred from asserting their fundamental rights for financial reasons.

Pursuant to § 34 (2) of the Federal Constitutional Court Act, abuse fees of up to EUR 2,600 can be imposed on parties to the proceedings. Constitutional complaints or other applications can amount to abuse if the free recourse to the Federal Constitutional Court is misused in an irresponsible manner to file applications that clearly have no prospects of success from the outset or to pursue purposes that are unrelated to the proceedings. Several types of such abuse have been identified over time and include, for instance, procedural applications that contain deliberately deceiving or indiscriminate and random submissions.

Parties to the proceedings can be reimbursed for their expenses – in particular lawyer’s fees – if their application was successful (cf. § 34 a of the Federal Constitutional Court Act). Expenses are always reimbursed for successful constitutional complaints; for other types of proceedings reimbursement is at the discretion of the Federal Constitutional Court. Only the statutory fees pursuant to the Lawyers’ Remuneration Act can be reimbursed, while higher fees agreed individually with lawyers cannot. In addition, all necessary expenses may be claimed. Moreover, expenses may completely or partially be reimbursed on grounds of equity. This may be the case for successful electoral complaints or if an unsuccessful constitutional complaint contributed to the clarification of a question of fundamental significance.