“Who does my village belong to?”

In the year-long dispute over a parking garage in the holiday resort of Göhren in Rügen, the municipality and the operating company want to reach an out-of-court agreement. Accordingly, the Stralsund Regional Court did not announce a court ruling on Wednesday until mid-December to give the parties to the dispute time to reach an agreement.

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The fight became known in the cinema

The dispute revolves around a contract between the operator and the municipality, taken from the movie “Who does my village belong to?” a favour. The contract states, for example, that competing parking spaces must be closed. According to previous private estimates, this results in a loss of about 60 thousand euros per year for the municipality. The contract is considered unethical. The parking garage operator has sued the municipality because it did not comply with the planned closure.

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“This is the worst contract I’ve ever read in my entire life,” attorney Peter Michael Distel, who represents the local community, said at the hearing. However, it was binding, as the former Minister of the Interior of the GDR acknowledged. Judge Rüdiger Rinnert noted criticisms of up to 80 years, which have limited society in its design choices for so long. In addition, it guarantees a kind of monopoly on the parking garage. But he also referred to the extensive negotiations and testing that preceded the contract at the time.

Discussions should take place immediately

The lawyer of the operating company, Hans-Joachim Brauch, also emphasized the legal and lengthy process of concluding the contract. The idea for the community, he said, was to build a parking garage and close off other parking lots to redirect traffic. The parties announced that the talks would begin without delay.