Börse Express – Thuringia does not want to make any further payments to the K + S Group

30 years after reunification, Thuringia no longer wants to be responsible for the immense security costs for disused GDR mines. The legal dispute over annual payments in the millions to the Hessian potash group K + S (Kassel) was heard on Thursday before the Weimar Higher Administrative Court. It is about the effectiveness of contracts from the 1990s. Thereafter, the listed company is exempt from the costs of securing work in the Merkers and Springen potash mines on the Thuringian-Hessian border.

With a ruling from 2015, the Meiningen Administrative Court prohibited Thuringia from limiting payments for the work in the pits in southern Thuringia to 409 million euros plus 20 percent. This money has already flowed to K + S. The state appealed against the decision of the administrative court. When a judgment will be made was still open late Thursday afternoon.

Despite the ongoing legal dispute, Thuringia will initially continue to pay the K + S potash group for underground security work in the disused Merkers and Springen pits in the Wartburg district. “We pay with reservation,” said the environment ministry’s spokesman, Tom Wetzling, on Thursday upon request.

The securing work in the disused pits is necessary to stabilize the huge underground cavities that were created during the potash extraction in the GDR and thus to prevent subsidence or even mountain falls. There was a cost explosion because lye penetrates the Springen pit and has to be pumped out ./rot/DP/fba

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AXC0286 2020-08-20/17:46

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