Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Boris Reitschuster’s website. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Just empty promises? State demands the return of Corona aid

The government assesses the legal situation completely differently than in 2021

At the beginning of the Corona crisis, the federal government under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel promised generous and unbureaucratic help to medium-sized companies, small businesses and the self-employed. They were hopeful signals at a time that was characterized by measures to contain the virus that were at times just as arbitrary as they were completely exaggerated.

The application for the bridging aid was tedious and it took some patience until the money flowed. But for some, the emergency aid became a dangerous boomerang early on. At the end of 2021, more than 30,000 small businesses and the self-employed were required to repay a total of €288 million in emergency Corona aid that they had received in the spring of 2020, shortly after the outbreak of the crisis.

All those whose liquidity bottleneck was less than previously forecast were asked to pay. However, all additional costs incurred by entrepreneurs and the self-employed were not taken into account. In addition, the applicants could not claim wages for themselves. The dubious support was a complete mockery because Olaf Scholz, still Minister of Finance in spring 2020, proudly announced that it was not a subsidy: “So nothing has to be repaid.”

More than half a million companies have applied for Bridging Aid III alone

But that’s not all: many companies and self-employed people are still receiving repayment notices these days. “All bridging aid will be reclaimed — a total of millions. Payable within one month, otherwise there is a risk of enforcement measures and high interest rates.” This is the email from a tax consultant to a dismayed entrepreneur, quoted by the FAZ [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung].

The author of the guest article, Dennis Hillemann, assumes that “many thousands more” of such repayment requests will follow. According to the specialist lawyer for administrative law and partner at the Fieldfisher law firm in Hamburg, those who were supposedly so generously funded at the time are affected by a special legal aspect: All state bridging aid during the Corona crisis was granted subject to full review and reclaim.

Now the entrepreneurs and solo self-employed have to submit final accounts. All of the data will then be examined again. To do this, the licensing authorities use legions of consultants from large auditing firms. A lot is at stake: more than half a million companies have applied for the so-called Bridging Aid III alone, and more than €33 billion has been paid out.

The Federal Ministry of Economics takes a different view without any reason

With the government takeover by the traffic light coalition*, the legal situation was “suddenly very often and differently assessed than in 2021,” writes Hillemann. “What used to appear to be harmless has now become a problem.” Likewise, applications were rejected and claims for reimbursement issued with the open reference that, after consultation with the Federal Ministry of Economics, a different view would now be taken.

For example, automotive suppliers or machine builders are suddenly accused that their slump in sales in 2021 was not “Corona-related” after all, but that is a prerequisite for the subsidy. Even with hairdressers it is said “with governmental coldness”: “People use their services less, perhaps due to inflation.”

In many cases, the authorities are apparently simply not interested in the fact that many companies did well until the end of 2019, but then their sales plummeted by more than 80%. True to the motto: There may have been other reasons than Corona of all things. [Yes, the government, media, big pharma and the WHO are the reason, and all according to plan.]

A wave of lawsuits may roll towards the administrative courts

What remains is sheer bewilderment. Arguably every entrepreneur would have preferred to continue their operations as normal, without having to worry about lockdowns and supply chain problems. The loss of prosperity over the almost three years of Corona cannot be made up for by entrepreneurs — while most of the employees continued to receive their salaries.

A participant in the FAZ forum sums up the situation as a person affected: “We had also applied for this help and received it. From the conditions clear to us at the time. Apparently the authorities did too, because we had supplied the documents. Now it is said that the aid applies only and exclusively to personnel costs. There should have been an imbalance there.”

Some angry voices murmur that Berlin wants to get billions of euros back from the bridging aid for other projects of the traffic light coalition, writes the administrative lawyer Hillemann. In view of the enormous costs for the “heat transition”, he should not be very wrong. Meanwhile, he sees a wave of lawsuits rolling towards the administrative courts if the government in Berlin does not take countermeasures and stop the tough practice of the approval authorities. His sobering prognosis: “There are currently no signs of that — quite the opposite.”

Afterword from the translator:

Why don’t they ask those “refugees/migrants” to pay back all those billions of euros they have received in help instead? Now that amount would get the German government out of the red and into the black in a jiffy, and would let them slowly steal that money for at least another hundred years all over again. But for that to happen they would need a few guillotines in front of the Reichstag and the regional seats of government for the current cabal. Not going to happen with these law-abiding slaves that would rather see their children’s future destroyed than stand up and fight for their freedom.

I think it was Vlad “Tepes” Dracul who said: “I cannot control men’s love, only their fear. Love changes; fear is as constant as a star.”