Translation of "Länderfinanzausgleich" in English

In Germany, tax revenues are redistributed between the Länder.

So, a big topic for us is federal finance reform.

Equalization payments are the most commonly known system for the redistribution of revenue in Germany and are an important tool for the financing of regional development.

Under the previous Länderfinanzausgleich system, the volume of redistributed finance was approximately DM 7 billion annually.

The current fiscal equalisation scheme will be in force until 2019, in order to provoke a change a constitutional majority is needed.

The equalization payments are being stepped up, the states entitled to payment adjustments should now receive 95% of the average of all states' revenue compared to 91% in the past.

The 'horizontal' transfer variant of this equalisation approach is basically the background of the Länderfinanzausgleich in Germany.

The receiving Länder are the same as the beneficiaries under the länderfinanzausgleich mechanism, except that the city­state of Bremen is excluded.

Some net-paying Länder (BadenWürttemberg, Bavaria, and Hesse) are currently instituting proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court against the Länder financial-equalisation arrangements with the aim of achieving a wider spread.

The institutional framework of the German financial equalization scheme between the federal states contributes to that problem too - the expenditures for subsidization can be balanced by perequations paid by the other federal states.

Given Germany's AAA rating, fiscal compensation via the Laender fiscal equalisation scheme and relatively comprehensive tax and expenditure autonomy, even economically weaker Laender can have cheap recourse – by international standards – to capital markets.

In a similar way to affairs at the European level, although the objective is to craft an efficient structure for the financial relations in a federal system, ultimately the main issue is redistribution – this is currently also being demonstrated once again by the debate about the Länder financial equalisation system.

As the population in the country side is systematically neglected and as there is no inter-state fiscal adjustment and as there are hardly existing social institutions, always new Thai ladies are streaming into the tourist towns for meeting the rich "white men".

Against the backdrop of German and European unification, the Advisory Board developed important guidelines and reform proposals relating to the equalisation of Länder finances in Germany as well as the significance of the Maastricht criteria for federal and Länder debt limits.

The measures comprise particularly the "Länderfinanzausgleich", the joint task Improving the regional economic structure (GRW) and advancements within active labour policy which are directed to regions with particularly high unemployment rates. Facing ongoing growth deficits of the national economy it is of growing importance to discuss which changes in balancing politics may induce more sustainable benefits for the donator regions.

The federal states Bavaria and Hessen have referred to the Federal Constitutional Court to protest against the fiscal equalisation scheme.

A further topic of concern for a future coalition government is the German fiscal equalisation scheme and thus the connected reform of federalism.

The suggestions that this idea could also help to protect nature in Germany have already been assessed for municipal fiscal equalisation in the Free State of Saxony as well as for the fiscal equalisation scheme in place between the Länder.

A value-based property tax model would also mean that economically strong German states like Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg would have to pay more into the Laender fiscal equalisation scheme.

These are the selfsame Bavarians who, on other occasions, denounce the system of revenue redistribution among the Länder and who, in CDU and CSU papers on structural issues, advocate the scrapping of all structural aid.

Höhn: The relatively highly indebted states and municipalities face particularly tough challenges: on the one hand, they will need to use a significant part of their revenues to pay the interest on their debts, but on the other, they can no longer finance investments with new loans. In Saarland, for example, around 18 cents of every euro from tax revenues and the federal fiscal equalization system go towards paying off interest. In Bavaria, this figure is a mere 1.8 cents. On top of that, there are also the increasing pension provision expenses.