Münster (dpa/lnw) - In the dispute over the repayment of Corona emergency aid to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Higher Administrative Court in Münster is aiming for a fundamental decision for the first quarter of 2023. That said a spokeswoman at the request of the German Press Agency. The NRW-OVG pushes the pace and prefers eleven procedures because around 2,500 lawsuits are pending at the administrative courts. However, a prerequisite for a quick decision is that all those involved in the procedure cooperate accordingly, according to the OVG. A date for the oral hearing has not yet been set.
After defeats in Corona emergency aid, the state had appealed to the administrative courts of Düsseldorf, Cologne and Gelsenkirchen at the OVG. Economics Minister Mona Neubaur (Greens) justified this at the beginning of October with reasons of economy and economy. After an extension of the deadline requested by the state, the 4th Senate now has the grounds for the appeal.
In August 2022, recipients of emergency aid were right in the first instance before the Düsseldorf Administrative Court. You should repay thousands of euros. From the point of view of the judiciary, however, the application forms and approval notices were ambiguous - the judges overturned them.
The three plaintiffs at the court in Düsseldorf initially each received 9,000 euros in emergency aid. However, the district government of Düsseldorf later reduced the amount of emergency aid they were entitled to to around 2,000 euros each and reclaimed the remaining 7,000 euros. According to the court, however, the applicants could have rightly assumed that the measure for the emergency aid would be their loss of sales and not - as the state only clarified weeks later - the losses incurred as a result of the pandemic.
At the beginning of the corona-related lockdown in March 2020, the "NRW-Soforthilfe 2020" program worth billions was launched for hundreds of thousands of self-employed people, freelancers and small and medium-sized companies with the support of the federal government. A lump sum was initially paid out - in order to gain time, the liquidity check was to be carried out later.
