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Bavaria takes first step to scrap student fees

Student fees could become a thing of the past in Bavaria, after a top court gave the go-ahead for the subject to be put to a referendum.

Published: 24 October 2012 10:32 CEST
Bavaria takes first step to scrap student fees
Photo: DPA

State Premier Horst Seehofer has been pushing for the fees to be scrapped since last year, and will be making the topic an important one in his campaign for next September’s state election.

Support for scrapping the fees – between €100 and €400 a semester – has been growing among the ranks of Seehofer’s Christian Social Union (CSU), Der Spiegel magazine said on Wednesday.

The Bavarian Constitutional Court ruled on Monday that the proposition to get rid of the fees could be subjected to a referendum as requested by a voter’s initiative with more than 25,000 signatures.

The magazine suggested the fees could be scrapped ahead of any popular vote – if the CSU and coalition partner in Bavaria’s state government, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), work together to reclaim the initiative.

“I am convinced, that the majority of people would vote against student fees,” Bavarian FDP chairman Andreas Fischer told the Mittelbayerischen Zeitung without saying whether he wanted to see them go or not.

This is not the first time that Seehofer has tried to abolish fees. His 2011 attempt was thwarted by opposition from his own party.

The Local/jcw

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MUNICH

Four injured as WWII bomb explodes near Munich train station

Four people were injured, one of them seriously, when a World War II bomb exploded at a building site near Munich's main train station on Wednesday, emergency services said.

Published: 1 December 2021 16:41 CET
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich.
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Privat

Construction workers had been drilling into the ground when the bomb exploded, a spokesman for the fire department said in a statement.

The blast was heard several kilometres away and scattered debris hundreds of metres, according to local media reports.

Images showed a plume of smoke rising directly next to the train tracks.

Bavaria interior minister Joachim Herrmann told Bild that the whole area was being searched.

Deutsche Bahn suspended its services on the affected lines in the afternoon.

Although trains started up again from 3pm, the rail operator said there would still be delays and cancellations to long-distance and local travel in the Munich area until evening. 

According to the fire service, the explosion happened near a bridge that must be passed by all trains travelling to or from the station.

The exact cause of the explosion is unclear, police said. So far, there are no indications of a criminal act.

WWII bombs are common in Germany

Some 75 years after the war, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, often uncovered during construction work.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about WWII bomb disposals in Germany

However, most bombs are defused by experts before they explode.

Last year, seven World War II bombs were found on the future location of Tesla’s first European factory, just outside Berlin.

Sizeable bombs were also defused in Cologne and Dortmund last year.

In 2017, the discovery of a 1.4-tonne bomb in Frankfurt prompted the evacuation of 65,000 people — the largest such operation since the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

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