V a t t e n f a l l - Sweden´s other face

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Dear Prime Minister Persson,
Following your interesting lecture on "European Challenges – the Swedish Perspective" at the Humboldt University in Berlin on October 18th, 2001, I asked you if you were fully aware, that the morally-reprehensible compulsory resettlement of the people of the Wend village of Horno would severely damage not only Vattenfall's reputation, but also that of the Swedish State. You replied: "We are aware of this problem. We take it seriously; there was a meeting in the Swedish Parliament a couple of weeks ago. We are watching the situation closely." You then went on to say, in so many words, that Vattenfall of course had to respect German laws. It is this last point that I should like to take up in this letter.
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It has also been repeatedly stated by representatives of Vattenfall in recent months, that Vattenfall must respect German law. The fact is, that there is no German law that requires the destruction of Horno. The Braunkohlengrundlagengesetz – also known as the "Horno Law" – from 1997 contains no provision that Horno be destroyed. The Act provides for the dissolution of Horno as a municipal entity and its incorporation into the municipality of Jänschwalde, but not for the physical destruction of Horno. If the legislators had intended this, they would have written it into the Act
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The Braunkohlengrundlagengesetz (Article 1 § 2) allows the devastation of villages if it is "unavoidable"; but nowhere in the Act is it stated that the devastation of Horno is unavoidable. The reason for this is that in 1997 not Parliament but the Brown Coal Committee (Braunkohlenausschuß) – a regional planning body – was responsible for determining that a planned resettlement was unavoidable.
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The first Brown Coal Plan for Jänschwalde, approved by the State Government in 1994, was declared to be unconstitutional and thus null and void by the State Constitutional Court in 1995, in a case filed by Horno. The Court ruled that the Constitution required a specific law to be enacted for the dissolution of a municipality against the will of its inhabitants, and such a law did not exist in the case of Horno.
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In 1998 the State Government approved a second Brown Coal Plan for Jänschwalde. In 2000, the Brandenburg State Constitutional Court declared this second Plan to be unconstitutional, and thus null and void, in a case filed by the village of Grießen. The Court ruled, that the democratic legitimization of the Brown Coal Committee was inadequate. As a consequence, the Regional and Brown Coal Planning Act (Braunkohlenplanungsgesetz) was amended in 2000, so that in future the Government will determine the "unavoidability" of a particular resettlement. This, however, has not yet happened.
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