This may sound like an absurd question to you, but here in Berlin, Germany, this is actually going to be the reality, as of right now. Today, without any prior notification or information, we received a memo from the university administration, ordering us to notify the administration of any rooms we use exclusivekly for teaching. Any research rooms exceeding our allotted space (no information about how this gets 'allotted' whatsoever) would incur a 'rent' of about 10€/square meter, to be deducted from our budgets (also no information which budget would be liable to the deduction).

From what I've been able to find out, the basis of this latest absurdity that is German university politics, seems to be the most recent contract between the state of Berlin and the university. The document alludes to a "landlord-tennant-model" according to which the research groups should pay rent to the university to make facility management more economical.

Our university has cut the number of tenured faculty in the institute of biology by more than half in the last 30 years. Now it appears it tries to milk the remaining few, because they occupy too much space. The idea is probably to shrink the used space just as fast as the number of faculty to be able to sell off the unused real estate. The university, a lean, mean teaching machine! Do more with less!

This also means that anybody trying to get one of the few remaining posts (our institute is currently in the process of hiring two new professors, each replacing two original positions) will have to negotiate a good rent deal as well...