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The "Fridays for Future" activist Luisa Neubauer
Photo: INA FASSBENDER / AFP
Almost a year and a half ago, the federal government introduced the Climate Protection Act.
But activists from “Fridays for Future” and other climate protection movements did not get the package away enough - they sued the Federal Constitutional Court.
The judges in Karlsruhe have now partially approved the constitutional complaint - and obliged the federal government to improve the law.
The reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions for the period after 2030 must be regulated in more detail by the end of next year.
The harsh verdict causes cheers on the part of climate protection activists - and a lack of understanding among parts of politics.
"Climate protection is not nice to have"
»WE WON !!!«, tweeted the »Fridays for Future« activist Luisa Neubauer, one of the plaintiffs. The verdict is "huge," she continues to write about the justification from Karlsruhe: "Climate protection is not nice-to-have, climate protection is our basic right."
Linus Steinmetz, one of the complainants of "Fridays For Future", calls the judgment a huge success. "This confirms for the first time what we have known for years," he told SPIEGEL. "The federal government's climate law has always been incompatible with scientific and social realities." Now it is also “printed in black and white.” The 17-year-old high school student believes that a lot now has to be renegotiated: from the regulations on phasing out coal and the CO2 price to dealing with fossil heating. "From a purely mathematical point of view, the coal phase-out law will now have to be changed," says Steinmetz.
In their reasoning for the judgment, the judges explicitly dealt with the age of the young complainants. Their freedom rights in the future are endangered by the inadequate law: These future emission reduction obligations are "practically all freedom potentially affected, because almost all areas of human life are still associated with the emission of greenhouse gases and are threatened by drastic restrictions after 2030". In order to preserve fundamentally secured freedom, the legislature should have taken precautions "to alleviate these high burdens," it says in the explanatory memorandum.
Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD)
welcomed the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court.
"For the time being, that's an exclamation point for climate protection," said the SPD politician on Thursday shortly after the verdict became known.
"Now the Federal Constitutional Court is essentially telling us that we should not only describe the path to climate neutrality after 2030 in one strategy".
Altmaier comes under criticism - also from Scholz
Even
Economy Minister
Peter Altmaier
(
CDU
)
attaches great importance to the judgment.
"It is epochal for climate protection and the rights of young people," wrote Altmaier on Twitter.
At the same time, the judgment ensures planning security for the economy.
However, he also had to defend himself directly on Twitter: climate activists accused him of having worked on the law himself, and that the judgment was also directed against his work.
"Stop pulling yourself out of responsibility," accused him of "Fridays for Future".
Altmaier protested that the law did not only come from him, the Ministry of the Environment was "in charge".
But also finance ministers and
SPD
chancellor candidate
Olaf Scholz got
involved in the discussion.
According to his memory, it was the Union that prevented a stricter climate protection law - not the coalition partner SPD.
"But we can correct that quickly," tweeted Scholz to Altmaier.
"Are you with us?"
The
Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock
called the judgment on Twitter "historic" and an important contribution to the protection of children and grandchildren.
"The next few years are crucial for consistent action," says Baerbock.
AfD angry, FDP hopes for a "new start"
The
AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel,
on the other hand, was annoyed by the verdict.
It is not the job of the Karlsruhe judges to intervene in the legislation, she tweeted.
The Federal Constitutional Court should protect the constitution and fundamental rights, "not ideological climate goals".
After the Karlsruhe ruling, the FDP is calling for a “new start in climate protection”.
The decision of the court was a "plea for long-term and intergenerational fairness in politics,"
wrote
Marco Buschmann
, First Parliamentary Managing Director of the FDP
in the Bundestag, on Twitter.
A new start requires a clear CO2 cap and certificate trading.
"It works effectively, in the long term and in a generation-fair manner," he wrote.
mrc / clh