The Construction of German Fiscal Federalism vs. the Deconstruction of Spanish “Fiscal Federalism”

Abstract

The reform of the Basic Law of Bonn by means of the Reform Act of 29 July 2009 (so-called German “Financial Constitution” reform) through which important amendments were made to the regulation of financial relations between the Bund and the Länder, has come to coincide, over time, with the reform processes for the seven Statutes of Autonomy of the respective Autonomous Communities in Spain (Andalusia, Aragon, Castile and León, Catalonia, the Autonomous Community of Navarra, the Valencian Community, Extremadura and the Balearic Islands) that also included new provisions on financial matters.

Today, the culmination of the processes for reforming fiscal federalism in Germany and Spain—following the Spanish Constitutional Court Judgments 247/2007 of 12 December and 31/2010 of 28 June—allows us to make a comparative study, where the following will no doubt be determining factors for evaluating the effective attainment of the goals initially proposed in both models: not only the effective constitutional validity of the Federal State model in Germany, but also the principles of cooperation and responsibility that inspire the financial relations between the Bund and the Länder, taking recent constitutional reforms into consideration, compared to the bilateralism without responsibility upon which financial relations between the State and Autonomous Communities in some recently reformed Statutes of Autonomy was based.