The Frankfurt Regional Court expects to be dependent on external courtrooms from 2023 onwards in order to be able to process the bulk of the pending proceedings.

As court president Wilhelm Wolf said at the annual meeting on Thursday, this is due to the fact that many procedures are becoming more and more complex.

Especially in criminal proceedings related to crypto mobile phones, sometimes ten or twelve defendants have to be tried at the same time.

Anna Sophia Lang

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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This not only entails enormous effort for the criminal courts, which is not comparable to that of "normal" proceedings, but also increases the total number of participants to such an extent that the courtrooms available up to now are no longer sufficient.

In addition, the justice center at the Konstablerwache, which includes the district court, the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office and the higher regional court as well as the general public prosecutor’s office, is already being renovated and the public prosecutor’s building, including the largest high-security room, is to be demolished at the beginning of 2023.

One is therefore looking for capacities and is also examining the construction of court tents, said Wolf.

Further mass proceedings expected

There have already been fundamental discussions with the city of Frankfurt regarding a possible property in an industrial area near Frankfurt's Osthafen.

However, the district court is not the only interested party.

Wolf said the solution he favored was to erect court tents in the courtyards between the Justice Center buildings.

This is not uncomplicated, because the distances to the buildings are small and the entrances are narrow, which is why cranes have to be used.

The advantage, however, is that you can continue to use the infrastructure of the courts, which is also cheaper.

According to Wolf, the new high-security room, which is currently being built in another courthouse as a replacement, should also be ready by the end of 2023.

For 2023, the President expects further receipts of mass proceedings at the civil chambers.

More than 500 lawsuits by Wirecard investors are currently pending against the Bafin.

Lawsuits for repayment of account management fees are to come.

A year ago, Wolf had sounded the alarm at the annual meeting due to the burden on the court and said that their backs were against the wall.

"We are now one step further and have moved away from the wall a bit," he said on Thursday.

It was possible to reduce the understaffing of the judges.

It was possible to set up another criminal division and had the "luck" that two youth divisions can be used as auxiliary jury divisions.

Wolf said he was pleased with the announcement of new positions for the court in the 2023 and 2024 budget.