In their coalition agreement of 2025, CDU, CSU and SPD promised to lower the electricity tax für alle so schnell wie möglich auf das europäische Mindestmaß, for everyone as quickly as possible to the European minimum. In the summer of 2025, the cabinet decided to lower it only for industry and agriculture. In early July, the coalition committee confirmed the decision. Households and small businesses got no cut. The German Retail Federation and the wholesale federation BGA called the decision a Wortbruch, a breaking of one’s word. Chancellor Friedrich Merz answered: Wir können nur das Geld ausgeben, das wir haben. We can only spend the money we have. He pointed to a condition in the agreement. All plans in the coalition agreement are subject to funding.
A Treaty That Outlived the Reich
On 20 July 1933, the Holy See and the German Reich concluded the Reichskonkordat, a treaty on the Catholic Church in Germany. It is still in force. Article 21 makes Catholic religious instruction a regular school subject. On 26 March 1957, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on the treaty. It found that the concordat had been validly concluded and never terminated. Violations had led to protests, not to its end. The concordat therefore still existed and bound the Federal Republic.
The same ruling let the states depart from the treaty’s school rules under German law, while the treaty still bound Germany under international law.
Payments Since 1803
Every year, the German states pay money to the churches. These Staatsleistungen, state payments, go back mainly to 1803. In that year, church property was given to secular rulers, and the new rulers took over the church’s obligations. In 1919, the Weimar Constitution ordered that the payments be durch die Landesgesetzgebung abgelöst, bought out by state law. It added: Die Grundsätze hierfür stellt das Reich auf. The Reich sets the principles for this. The Basic Law of 1949 took this article over. The principles have never been set, and so the payments continue. For 2022, the states planned about 602 million euros for the Catholic and Protestant churches alone.
Ablösen in this legal sense means to end against compensation. The payments can stop only against compensation, and in more than a century no federal law has set the terms.
The Nuclear Agreement and Its Price
On 14 June 2000, the federal government and the energy companies agreed on ending nuclear power in Germany. The agreement is known as the Atomkonsens, the nuclear consensus. It was signed on 11 June 2001, and in 2002 it was secured in law. In 2010, a new government extended the running times of the plants. This became known as the Ausstieg aus dem Ausstieg, the exit from the exit. After the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, the government reversed course again. On 6 December 2016, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the new law was largely compatible with the Basic Law. But the companies had to be compensated. The court said that trust in the electricity quantities granted in 2002 deserved particular protection. Investments made in justified trust in the 2010 extension also had to be compensated. In 2021, the government and the four companies signed a contract. The companies received 2.428 billion euros, and in return they ended all lawsuits over the phase-out.
The state was free to change the agreement. The court made it pay for what the companies had relied on.
Twenty Years to the Day
On 27 February 1953, West Germany signed the Londoner Schuldenabkommen, the London Debt Agreement. It settled the pre-war debts of the German Reich, among them the Dawes and Young loans of the 1920s. One part was set aside. The interest arrears from the years after the war were to wait until a possible reunification. Germany was reunified on 3 October 1990, and the claims came back. The last payment was made on 3 October 2010, twenty years to the day later. German Wikipedia gives it as 69.9 million euros. A Protestant news service reported that 75 million euros were still on the books at the end of June 2010.
The Final Settlement
The treaty that settled the international side of German unification has finality in its name. It is the Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in bezug auf Deutschland, the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. The two German states and France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States signed it in Moscow on 12 September 1990. It is regarded as taking the place of a peace treaty. Article 1 says that the external borders of united Germany werden am Tage des Inkrafttretens dieses Vertrags endgültig sein, will be final on the day the treaty enters into force. It also says that united Germany has no territorial claims against other states und wird solche auch nicht in Zukunft erheben, and will not raise any in the future either. On 14 November 1990, Germany and Poland signed a border treaty in Warsaw that confirmed the Oder-Neisse line as inviolable.
Holy and Inviolable
The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War in the Empire in 1648. The Osnabrück treaty opens with the wish for a christlicher allgemeiner und immerwährender Friede, a Christian, universal and perpetual peace. Its Article V takes up the religious peace of 1555. That peace shall be als gültig anerkannt und als heilig und unverletzlich eingehalten, recognized as valid and kept as holy and inviolable. The same paragraph declares void any objection or protest, from clergy or laity, inside or outside the Empire, at any time. The Peace of Westphalia became a fundamental law of the Empire. The Pope protested against it anyway and did not recognize it.
Words That Seal a Deal
Topp! — Agreed! Duden defines it as an exclamation that confirms an agreement just made, often sealed with a handshake. The word comes from Low German legal language, where it named the handshake in a legal transaction.
Schlag ein! — Strike in! It asks the other person to take the offered hand and so confirm the deal.
Hand drauf! — Hand on it!
Ist gebongt. — It is rung up. Duden says it means that something is agreed and will be done as discussed. The word comes from the cash register.
Versprochen ist versprochen und wird auch nicht gebrochen. — Promised is promised, and it will not be broken. Children say it to each other.
In Goethe’s Faust, the wager with the devil is closed with the same word. Faust: Die Wette biet ich! I offer the wager! Mephistopheles: Topp! Faust: Und Schlag auf Schlag! And hand strikes hand!
Bought Is Bought
Gekauft ist gekauft, bought is bought. The consumer advice center in Hamburg uses the phrase for a basic rule of German shopping. A customer who buys something in a store has no legal right to bring it back because she no longer likes it. Einzelhändler sind beim Kauf in einem Ladengeschäft nicht verpflichtet, Waren zurückzunehmen. Retailers are not obliged to take back goods bought in a store. Many shops take goods back anyway. This is called Kulanz, goodwill, and the shop sets the conditions. It may give a voucher instead of cash, for example. Defective goods are a different matter. For purchases made online, the law gives the buyer 14 days to withdraw.
No Way Back From a Termination Agreement
A German employment relationship can end by mutual agreement, in an Aufhebungsvertrag. Once it is signed, it cannot simply be withdrawn. On 7 February 2019, the Federal Labor Court decided the case of a cleaner who had signed such an agreement in her own apartment. She said that she had been ill that day. The court held that the consumer right of withdrawal does not apply to these agreements, even when they are signed at home. It named one limit, the Gebot fairen Verhandelns, the requirement of fair negotiation. A side breaks it when it creates psychological pressure that makes a free and considered decision much harder, for example by deliberately exploiting an illness. On 24 February 2022, the same court set the boundary of that limit. An employer may offer the agreement for immediate signature and refuse time to think. The employee can always say no.