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Accountability of Politicians

The joint ETL/ECTIL study on ‘Accountability of Politicians’ examines the responsibility of politicians under the law of damages. It was instigated by members of ECTIL’s Supervisory Board because of the increasing relevance of the subject and a lack of detailed treatments of the area to date.

The project focuses on the responsibility of politicians involved in public administration, though some attention is also paid to politicians active in the legislative field. The nucleus of the comparative analysis is dealings with tax monies, but actions producing indirect financial consequences are also to be discussed. The project is intended to provide an abstract discussion of dogmatic and legal policy issues. It thus considers the present legal framework for the liability of politicians in the selected jurisdictions, the specification of the duties of care and subjective prerequisites as well as the possible necessity for caps on liability.

The project includes jurisdictional reports from Germany, Austria, France, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Spain and Hungary, as well as a special report providing an economic analysis. It is to be conducted jointly by ETL and ECTIL and led by Ernst Karner (ETL, ECTIL, and Vienna University) and Helmut Koziol (ECTIL).

The results of the project were published with Jan Sramek Verlag in May 2020:
Helmut Koziol (ed), Politikerhaftung. The Liabilities of Politicians (2020), ISBN 978-3-7097-0242-0.


For further information on this project please contact ectil@ectil.org.