Abstract
Germany can be considered a latecomer regarding the use of public-private partnerships. Although the PPP policy in Germany has been a matter of a rather wide political consensus, there is no explicit political commitment to it.
PPP is perceived only as an additional way for the provision of public infrastructure. PPP projects in general and transport-specific PPPs in particular have to be compared with traditional methods of procurement.
Only if PPP projects are found to be more cost-efficient, then this type of procurement is chosen. Since decisions for investment and procurement in Germany generally are taken on various levels, several PPP-supporting units and entities exist.
Those PPP-supporting institutions provide quite a variety of guidelines, handbooks, et cetera. But this applies mostly to PPPs in the field of buildings and social infrastructure.
The use of PPP in transport infrastructure is more or less exclusively a matter of PPPs in road transport. However, in the field of federal main roads and motorways so far there is no typical PPP contract.
The same goes for PPP projects for roads falling in the exclusive competence of states and municipalities. The number of PPP projects on those levels is considered to be too small, and at the same time the project designs are said to be too different to provide grounds for standardization.