I am afraid you are unlikely to find any regulatory agency to help you with this. This is one of the most complained about issues, but the Terms and Conditions make it clear this is not permitted. You were lucky there was only a surchage...many airlines cancel the return altogether and unless you purchase a whole new ticket you are stranded.
It is hard to justify why they can do this. To me, if I buy a Happy Meal at McDonalds and refuse the toy, McDonalds are happy because they are 1 toy up and I am happy I don't have to throw the toy in the bin. It would be interesting to see what reaction they got if McDonalds charged more for the meal without the toy than with. However, I will give you the explanation that was given to me by BA regarding this.
Let's say the flight from LA to Warsaw direct costs $1,000. If Lufthansa, who need to feed passengers through their Frankfurt hub, charged $1,000 or more to Warsaw, noone would travel. Why change when you can do direct? To entice people to go via Frankfurt, they offer the fare at $900. However, the price for a direct flight to Frankfurt, for which demand is high, may be $1,000 or more. This is called dynamic pricing. The price of the ticket is determined by market forces and is demand led. However, the demand is determined over the whole route, not just one segment.
This was quickly spotted by frequent flyers in the 80s and 90s and the habit of throwing away a ticket segment became common. The savings, particularly in Business Class fares were massive. My complaint to BA involved a business class fare from NYC to LHR which was substantially more costly that a business class fare from NYC to Rome, via LHR. However, the airlines changed their Terms and Conditions to give them the right to cancel the ticket, or charge more, if you breach the ticket conditions by not taking the whole journey.
You agreed to this when you booked the ticket. Although you bought the ticket on a German travel site, there will be a catch-all tick box that you have read all the terms and conditions and agree to them. 99.9% of the people who buy a ticket don't read them...indeed, the time it would take would probably time out the transaction...but by agreeing you are stuck. The airlines T&C's are notoriously one sided, but I think there is no where to go with this complaint.
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