Decision no. 586/2009

The requested property had, on the one hand, an incontrovertible history of seizure. On the other hand, however, it had already been the object of a restitution settlement. Before the Arbitration Panel subjected this point to closer consideration, it first had to resolve the question whether the implementation of a restitution recommendation pursuant to the provisions of the General Settlement Fund Law would be at all possible.

On 17 January 2001, the cut off day pursuant to the General Settlement Fund Law, the requested property was owned by one of the agencies of the Austrian accident insurance. This property owner, created by law of 1948, is established as a so called body under public law with an independent legal entity. Such establishments do not have an owner in the usual sense.

Therefore, the organizational construction of the owner was to be examined: This follows, as does the entire Austrian social insurance, the principle of self-administration, which is also embodied in constitutional law. Among other things, this means that the City and/or its organs could not exert influence on the conduct of business. This was rather to be conducted by the insured parties themselves.

However, in order to be able to speak of "publicly-owned property", the General Settlement Fund Law requires the possibility of state intervention in the affairs of the property owner. The aim of this provision is obviously that the actual implementation of the decisions of the Arbitration Panel should be rendered. However, should such a right to take action be absent, then in those cases in which the owner - as in this case - was created by means of a federal law, then publicly-owned property is also not present.

As the question of "publicly-owned property" must therefore be negated, the Arbitration Panel was already for this reason not able to pronounce a recommendation for restitution.