Exploding project costs in Hamburg: embarrassing questions for red-green

It's a bit like the Elbphilharmonie reloaded: almost 800 million euros in additional costs are incurred in addition to the originally estimated budget for two projects by the Hamburg city cleaning department and Hamburg Wasser. Because, in their view, the red-green Senate is stonewalling when it comes to information, the CDU now wants to apply to the citizens for a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry (PUA). The Left has already signaled its general agreement.

It is about “clarifying responsibility for possible errors and avoidable financial damage on a huge scale,” said CDU parliamentary group leader Dennis Thering when presenting the application. The Green Environment Senator and Second Mayor Katharina Fegebank, whose area of ​​responsibility for the two municipal companies, is particularly under fire.

The Vera II project, which has increased in price from 145 to 396 million euros, is, according to Hamburg Wasser, the largest sewage sludge recycling plant in Germany. At the Center for Resources and Energy (ZRE) the costs rose from 234 to 780 million. The new waste incineration and sorting plant is intended to contribute to a climate-friendly energy supply - this is important because Hamburg must become climate neutral by 2040 due to a referendum.

The cost increases only became known in bits and pieces and the CDU parliamentary representative Sandro Kappe repeatedly asked the Senate about them for months. He found procurement violations, early warnings and questionable control structures. “But instead of complete answers, we always only receive contradictions and refused information,” says Kappe.

According to the CDU, the PUA is intended “not only to clarify what went wrong with the two major projects, but above all to ensure that such mistakes are not repeated in the future.” There have also been significant cost increases in other projects, such as the climate research center for the University of Hamburg. And the costs for the planned A26 East across the south of Hamburg have also risen from 1.8 to 2.6 billion euros since 2021 - also 800 million euros on top.

The key questions the committee is asked to address include why the projects have become more expensive, who may have breached their duties and who knew about the problems and when and who made the decisions.

This raises the question of the responsibility of the management of the municipal companies and whether the supervisory board should not have monitored them better. In addition to Senator Fegebank, the twelve-member committee includes two of her employees and one from the tax authority. There are also one representative each from the Chamber of Commerce and the tenants' association as well as six employee representatives.

Fegebank took over the chairmanship with the senatorial office from Jens Kerstan (Greens) in spring 2025. In December, the management assured that everything was in order, says Fegebank. Only the new management now in office realized that the project would actually be much more expensive.

At a short-term press conference on Tuesday, Fegebank defended itself against the accusation of having inadequately informed the parliamentary representatives. In addition to Kappe's many requests, her authority followed the requests for file submission - it has already made files from the past ten years available. There were also a number of non-public meetings of the Environment Committee in which the Senate provided information.

Even in a PUA, since the focus is on companies, some things are unlikely to be negotiated publicly. But it offers completely different options than a simple committee: It gets a working staff, can evaluate files and, in particular, summon witnesses and, if necessary, swear them in.

To set up a PUA, 31 votes are needed in the Hamburg parliament. The CDU parliamentary group has 26. The Left has announced that it will agree to the establishment of a PUA. “Inspection of the files has shown that a lot of questions remain unanswered and that the processing of the three incidents behind closed doors has not yet achieved a satisfactory result,” said Left MP Stephan Jersch. The Left will talk to the CDU about their catalog of questions and possible additions.

The SPD parliamentary group pointed out that the investigation was already underway and that a PUA would be very expensive. “In our opinion, further discussion in the regular committee would be the better choice,” said parliamentary group leader Dirk Kienscherf. His Green colleague Rosa Domm also referred to the regular committee, where important answers to the questions of the CDU faction making the proposal could emerge at the next meeting.