The Bundestag Indemnification Committee has concluded its deliberations on the long-delayed craft amendment to the Federal Indemnification Law for individual victims of Nazism, and is expected to submit its report to the Bundestag, in the course of this month.
The amendment must then be passed by the Bundestag in a second and third reading and by the Federal Council–the Upper House–in a final reading. In the first reading, the Bundestag and the Federal Council differed widely. Even if such divergences can be avoided this time, it is not likely to be enacted before May.
After the first Bundestag reading in December, the amendment was referred to the Indemnification Committee, where it has been considered since the turn of the year. Previously, the text had been formulated, in two years of deliberations, by a “working group” consisting of Bundestag deputies and fiscal experts from the Federal and State Governments. The Amendment constitutes a complete overhaul and rewrite of the 1953 Federal Indemnification Law, whose worst shortcomings and injustices it is designed to remedy.
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