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parties in late November 2013 after five weeks of negotiations.
8. For example, new policy priorities arose in Germany in recent years in the areas of sustainable
energy policy and a subsidy for home childcare; both of these new priorities involved the
identification of offsetting savings elsewhere. 
9. Marine Portal, Rowan Jones and Klaus Lüder (2012) “French Revolution and German circumspection:
reforming budgeting and accounting in national goverments’ Public Money and Management,
32:5 357-361.
10. Appointments are staggered and each year, the term of one Council member expires. Council
members cannot hold political posts concurrently and must not belong to any trade association or
association of employers or employees/trade union, either currently or in the year before their
nomination.
11. Estimated as 20% of their time although this can be difficult to define.
12. Although not an explicit goal, a by-product of the JEF is that it provides valuable funding for
participating institutes and promotes economic research that might not otherwise be prioritized. 
13. German Cities Council.
14. The Institute for the World Economy at the University of Kiel (IfW); Halle Institute for Economic
Research (IWH); RWI Essen; German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) Berlin; and Ifo Institute
– Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich. 
15. It should be noted that the Court of Auditors and the Constitutional Court also have a role in
monitoring compliance with fiscal rules.
16. The BRH is headquartered in Bonn and supported by seven regional audit offices in Berlin,
Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Coblenz, Munich and Stuttgart. The headquarters and
regional offices comprise around 1 300 staff. Separately, the Länder have their own courts of audit
guaranteed under the state constitutions. There are naturally many points of contact between the
Federal Court of Audit and the Land courts of audit and if an audit is the responsibility of both the
Federal Court of Audit and a Land court of audit a joint audit, they might undertake a joint audit.

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The Conference of the presidents of the Federal Court of Audit and the Land courts of audit
(Konferenz der Präsidentinnen und Präsidenten der Rechnungshöfe des Bundes und der Länder)
meets twice a year to co-ordinate.
17. If the Federal Government’s draft budget deviates from the BRH budget request without the consent
of the BRH, then the parts for which no agreement was reached must be attached unchanged to
the draft budget (Section 29(3) of the Federal Budget Code).
18. At the time of this review there were 49 audit units.
19. For example, in 2012 the President of the BRH called out the German Army for wasting millions of
euros of taxpayers’money producing its own sunscreen, cough drops and lip balm rather than
buying them off the shelf.
20. For example, the Federal Chancellor launched a National Strategy on Demography in 2011, and two
demographic summits have been held since then.
21. Flyvbjerg, B., M.S. Holm and S. Buhl (2002), “Underestimating costs in public works projects: Error
or lie?”, 
Journal of the American Planning Association
, 68(3), pp. 279-295.
22. While they are sometimes referred to as the lower and upper house, they are technically separate
bodies and do not form a bicameral parliament.
23. The consent of the Bundesrat is required for legislation on tax revenues accruing wholly or in part
to the Länder.
24. Unusually, following the federal elections in 2013, the new committee on economy and energy was
the largest committee with 46 members. 
25. Sometimes referred to as the Subcommittee on the Public Accounts.
26. There are four other parliamentary bodies with special tasks that are composed of members of the
Budget Committee: 
1. The Confidential Committee set up under Section 10a (2) of the Federal Budget Code is responsible
for discussion and decisions on the intelligence services’ budgetary plans; 
2. A committee established under Section 3 (1) of the Act on Federal Debt Management (Federal
Finance Panel) receives regular information from the Federal Ministry of Finance on all issues
relating to federal debt and on all matters of fundamental policy and issues of particular
importance relating to the Federation’s holdings in companies under private law and the
administration of these holdings. 
3. A committee established under Section 10a of the Financial-Market Stabilisation Act monitors
the EUR 480 million federal banking bailout of autumn 2008. The panel deals with all issues
concerning this fund and deliberates on long-term developments in policy relating to the
financial market. (Linn and Sobolewski, 2010)
4. A Special Committee for Eurozone Crisis Legislation was established under the 2011 Act
Amending the Euro Stabilisation Mechanism to reach in special cases quick or confidential
decisions on the release of funds from the euro bailout mechanism (the European Financial
Stability Facility – EFSF), without a vote before the full parliament. This was successfully
challenged before the Federal Constitutional Court and the role of the committee was
subsequently amended under Section 6 of the 2012 Act on Financial Participation in the
European Stability Mechanism. This allows for the Panel, drawn from members of the Budget
Committee) to convene if the government invokes particular confidentiality when planning to
purchase government bonds on the secondary market. 
27. Traditionally members of the sectoral committees speak more in the first reading, while members
of the budget committee intervene more in the second and third readings. 
28. A former Director of the United States Congressional Budget Office and the Chair of the United
Kingdom Office for Budget Responsibility were invited to give evidence at a budget committee
hearing which can be viewed here