In Frankfurt am Main, tickets have been issued by a private service provider since 2018. This is illegal, the Higher Regional Court now ruled. Since then, all parking tickets for incorrect parking have been contestable.
Municipalities may not use private service providers to monitor traffic. This emerges from a decision of the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Frankfurt on Monday. The right to punish administrative offenses such as improper parking is exclusively assigned to the state. This state monopoly on violence relates to flowing and stationary traffic. In the specific case, the issue was a € 15 fine imposed by a temporary worker employed by a private company in Frankfurt as a city police officer (file number 2 SS-OWi 963/18).
Temporary workers would also be used in other municipalities in Hesse in this way, the OLG explained. This is illegal. The legal obligations of the city of Frankfurt as a police authority to monitor stationary traffic and to punish violations are sovereign tasks. These should not be carried out by private service providers. The case against the driver must be stopped because the underlying evidence is subject to an “absolute ban on the use of evidence”.
In 2018 alone, since the private service provider has been active in the city, more than 700,000 parking violations were punished in Frankfurt, more than one million euros were claimed in total. The OLG Frankfurt is the first higher regional court in Germany to deal with the question of the admissibility of the use of private service providers in the area of traffic monitoring of stationary traffic. In November the OLG had already made a fundamental decision that cities and municipalities should not transfer speed measurements in road traffic to companies.
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