Key legal question
Whether the appeal against the Federal Administrative Court's remand order and related cost allocation was admissible immediately before the Federal Supreme Court.
Extracted holding
The challenged remand decision was an interlocutory decision, not a final one; the appeal was admissible only under the narrow conditions for interlocutory decisions, which were not shown.
Extracted reasoning
A remand order is generally an interlocutory decision, including when costs are decided with it. It becomes a final decision only if the lower authority has no discretion and must merely implement the higher court's ruling mathematically. Here ElCom still had to conduct further factual clarifications and determine the recoverable network costs anew, so the decision was not final. No irreparable harm was alleged or apparent.