New residential law: Easier balcony power plant, owners' meeting also online
In future, apartment owners will also be able to hold meetings online if they wish. Approval for solar panels will be easier, even for tenants.
Balcony power plant on a house in Bremen
(Image: heise online / anw)
Germany is lowering the barriers for balcony power plants. While homeowners in particular have been active in the solar market to date, more tenants and more apartment owners will now be allowed to invest in plug-in solar devices and thus reduce their electricity bills. At the same time, purely online condominium owners' meetings will become legal if the owners so decide. A corresponding amendment to tenancy and condominium law was passed by a large majority in the Bundestag at around 10 p.m. on Thursday.
Information on electricity exports added in the 5th paragraph.
The undertaking is an initiative of the Ministry of Justice to lower the legal hurdles for balcony power plants, which in turn is part of the German government's photovoltaic strategy. Tenants and homeowners are entitled to be allowed to install plug-in solar devices. By making so-called balcony power plants "privileged structural changes", tenants or condominium owners no longer have to justify the installation separately. If a tenant lives in a condominium, they can ask the landlord to obtain a corresponding resolution at the owners' meeting. According to the Federal Ministry of Justice, the meeting has discretionary powers as to what the balcony power plant can look like, but it may not impose excessive requirements to prevent the project.
To ensure that owners' meetings are not delayed due to scheduling or space constraints, they should also be able to take place exclusively online in the future. To achieve this, however, the homeowners' association must pass a resolution in principle by a three-quarters majority, which must be renewed at least every three years. At least one face-to-face or hybrid meeting is therefore still necessary, precisely to create the possibility of purely online meetings.
For a few years, there is still an obligation to hold an owners' meeting at least once a year that is not held exclusively online – unless the owners unanimously decide that they can also meet exclusively virtually. This resolution may only be passed with a three-quarters majority from 2028. The expiry of the resolutions after a maximum of three years is intended to protect minority owners who were not yet members of the community of owners at the time of the fundamental resolution and who may not wish to hold purely online events. The Bundesrat wanted the principle of unanimity for the approval of any virtual meeting in the first place, and in the long term. However, it is unlikely that the chamber of the federal states will successfully appeal against the regulation passed by the Bundestag.
"Part of the future and of progress"
All parliamentary groups in the Bundestag voted in favor of the amendment, except for the AfD. Its spokesperson criticized the fact that the solar power generated was being "dumped abroad". In fact, Germany's electricity exports fell by a quarter last year, despite stable photovoltaic feed-in to the German power grid. Ten years ago, Germany exported 40 percent more electricity with significantly lower solar power production. Regarding the new possibility of online-only homeowners' meetings, the MP accused Justice Minister Marco Buschmann and his Free Democratic Party (FDP) of wanting to replace "reality with a screen reality".
For Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, Canan Bayram was pleased that the amendment would enable more people to be "part of the future and of progress". For the CDU/CSU, Stephan Mayer explained his colleagues' approval of the amendment, but criticized the fact that it came "far too late". His parliamentary groups had already submitted a motion to amend the law in May of the previous year. However, this did not provide for purely virtual condominium owners' meetings and did not go quite as far as the government proposal in terms of easing the requirements for balcony power plants. The CDU/CSU motion was not approved by other parliamentary groups at its second reading on Thursday evening and therefore failed.
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Zanda Martens from Düsseldorf took the floor from the SPD. She reported on local subsidies for balcony power plants; low-income households could even receive a full refund of the purchase price in Düsseldorf. "The sun is social democratic. It shines for everyone," her speech was reminiscent of socialist songs.
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