Consult this publication on line at

6.3. Staffing and analytical support
The Budget Committee and its subcommittees are supported by a Secretariat of around
10 staff. Their tasks are mainly administrative in nature – drafting letters and replies to
inquiries, providing logistical support for committee meetings (agenda, speakers, papers,
minutes, etc.), preparing and accompanying parliamentary delegations, and writing up
committee recommendations and detailed reports for the plenary. The BC Secretariat
occasionally contributes to the work of the 
Bundestag
Research Services Budget and Finance
Division (the 
Wissenschaftlicher Dienst
or WD4). This division of around five nonpartisan staff
mainly responds to requests from the Budget and Finance Committees, although its work
tends to focus on legal, political, and historical matters. Due to the impact of the Eurozone
crisis on the workload of the 
Bundestag
and the BC in particular, the parliamentary
Box 16.
The Bundesrat Finance Committee
The Finance Committee of the Bundesrat has main responsibility for review of the
federal budget in that chamber. It is comprised of 16 members who are typically the
Finance Ministers in their home states. Unlike in the Bundestag where tax legislation is
dealt with separately in the Finance Committee, the Bundesrat’s Finance Committee
combines both roles.

---

BUDGET REVIEW: GERMANY
OECD JOURNAL ON BUDGETING – VOLUME 2014/2 © OECD 2015
65
administration reorganised some of its staff and hired additional staff for a new European
Affairs sub-directorate, including a small liaison office in Brussels. Party groups also have a
support staff, a limited number of whom may be specialised on budget issues.
As noted in Section 4.2, parliament receives substantial support from the 
Bundesrechnungshof
.
Parliament may also consult with outside experts in the Council of Economic Experts or the
various research institutes but in practice such consultations are 
ad hoc
rather than
systematic and tend to be focussed on new projects.
The limited amount of designated in-house specialist support available to the BC
highlights the capacity imbalance between the executive and the parliament, particularly
given the level of detailed scrutiny undertaken by the BC. In practice, parliament depends
on the executive for information and analysis and makes full use of its right to request it.
At times the burden on ministry staff is high. Given the nature of Germany’s parliamentary
government and the respect commanded by the 
Bundestag
and the BC, information is
usually forthcoming but parliament’s capacity to break it down and independently verify it
remains limited. 
In 2012, in the context of discussions and proposals on implementation of the Fiscal
Treaty and the new Stability and Growth Pact, the Social Democrats (SPD), at that time the
largest opposition party, proposed the creation of a “National Council for Budget and Fiscal
Policy” – in essence a sort of hybrid of the fiscal council model chosen by many EU countries
and a parliamentary budget office (PBO).
28
In the end, however, rather than create a new PBO
or enlarge the mandate of an existing independent body, parliament adopted the
government’s proposal to establish an “independent advisory council” to assist the Stability
Council in monitoring compliance with the upper limit for the structural general-
government deficit under Section 51 Subsection (2) of the Budgetary Principles Act. This new
body alongside other independent inputs into the forecasting process is seen as meeting the
new EU requirements (see Section 4.1), but does little to increase the analytical capacity of
the parliament. Although the SPD proposal failed to gain sufficient support within
parliament at the time – in part because of resource concerns – the issue of establishing a
parliamentary budget office may be reconsidered in a subsequent legislative term. Such an
office could be beneficial if it could provide advice in real time or from a forward looking
perspective, in contrast to the advice provided by the BRH. There are other arguments to be
made in favour of a PBO. The BC also scrutinises any legislation that will have a budgetary
impact (e.g. additional expenditure or decreases in revenue). As such, independent policy
costings or the less resource intensive option of independent verification of costings –
functions that could be carried out by a PBO – would no doubt be useful.
29
The growth of specialised bodies to assist the legislature in budgetary matters is a
strong trend in OECD countries. Such bodies serve to rebalance the asymmetry of
information between the executive and the parliament and have the potential to improve
transparency and to enhance the credibility of the government’s budget and the public
finances. In addition to evaluation of fiscal policy and budget proposals, common
functions include a role in economic or budgetary forecasts, monitoring compliance with
fiscal rules, assessing medium or long-term fiscal sustainability, a role in policy costings;
and other analytical studies. These bodies are quite diverse. For example, they may take
the form of specialised units within parliamentary research services, parliamentary
departments with independent mandates, or fully independent institutions. Examples of
the former include the Scrutiny Unit in the United Kingdom parliament, the Budgetary

---

BUDGET REVIEW: GERMANY
OECD JOURNAL ON BUDGETING – VOLUME 2014/2 © OECD 2015
66
Control Department in the Research and Information Center in the Israeli Knesset, and the
Department of Social and Economic Research in the Bureau of Research in the Chancellery
of the Polish 
Sejm
. Australia, Austria, and Canada have all set up Parliamentary Budget
Offices (PBO), and Italy is in the process of establishing a PBO which will meet the new EU
regulations on independent bodies. The largest independent bodies are the Korean
National Assembly Budget Office (NABO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), with
125 and 250 staff respectively but the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office performs similar
functions (sometimes on a smaller scale) with just 15 staff and a budget of CAD 2.8 million,
the equivalent of less than EUR 2 million.