Abstract

The article deals with the concept of “Daseinsvorsorge“ (“public provision for existence“) as the expression of a public task, and it asks whether this term is still necessary and useful. The original idea (Forsthoff 1938) is: Individuals in the modern society are dependent on services which they cannot achieve by own means so that governments are called upon to perform such tasks. Today, among other things, the concept of such public services serves as a source of political strategies and of legal arguments which both aim at protecting public undertakings against requirements of European Community Law. The European Commission has accepted “Daseinsvorsorge” as a translation of “services of general economic interest” (cf. Treaty Establishing the EC, art. 16 and 86). The responsibility of the state and municipalities (at least subsidiarily, as a legal guarantee) constitutes an important element of the theory of the social state and also a constitutional principle derived from art. 20 sect. 1 of the German Basic Law, but was expressed in essence already by Lorenz von Stein in the middle of the 19^th century.