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Fridays for Future demonstrations
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Oliver Berg / picture alliance / dpa
The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court against the Climate Protection Act at the end of April made legal history: the judges in Karlsruhe decided that it would restrict future generations in their freedom if CO2 emissions were not consistently reduced in the coming years.
The activists of Fridays For Future celebrated the judge's verdict with euphoria.
Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) is now building on this decision and, according to SPIEGEL information, has filed a complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court against three federal states: It concerns the climate protection laws of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria as well as a legal regulation that does not yet exist in Brandenburg.
In total, there are five complaints drawn up by the Berlin environmental lawyer Remo Klinger.
Klinger was already one of the main authors of the proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court.
Violation of the rights of minors to freedom
As with the first successful proceedings in Karlsruhe, the complainants are minors from the respective federal states.
Klinger argues that these are violated by the inadequate or missing regulations in their "constitutional rights of freedom."
Klinger and the DUH deliberately chose the federal states:
North Rhine-Westphalia
Under Prime Minister and Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet (CDU), an amended climate protection law was passed just last week. In it, the state has committed itself to stricter savings targets for greenhouse gas emissions, just like the federal government. However, Klinger argues, the law does not contain "any structure to be taken seriously to guarantee a reasonably even burden of fundamental rights over the generations." Even more: "The law has been structurally and thus considerably weakened in terms of content," writes Klinger in his brief, which is available to SPIEGEL. The old regulation provided for a climate protection plan that had to be drawn up every five years. This is now being replaced in the new version that was decided just last week by a legally largely non-binding »climate audit«.
The situation is similar with
Bavaria
, whose Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) likes to stage himself as a strict climate protector. In the Free State's Climate Protection Act, there is a lack of regulated deadlines, and there are “no interim goals for the period up to 2030,” said Klinger. This is exactly what the Federal Constitutional Court has demanded in the case of the Climate Protection Act at federal level, and even beyond the year 2030 - a deficiency that was remedied with a version of the law that was quickly amended before the summer break.
The lignite state of
Brandenburg
, which is governed by Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (SPD) with the participation of the CDU and the Greens, has not yet passed a climate protection law at all.
In his constitutional complaint, Klinger complains that there is "no legal structure to guarantee a halfway even burden of fundamental rights over the generations."
The Union is threatened with a legal setback
A decision by the Karlsruhe judges against North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria should seriously damage the image of the two Union top executives Laschet and Söder.
The Bavarian Climate Protection Act, against which Klinger also takes action before the Bavarian Constitutional Court, regulates the legally binding nature of the climate targets adopted, as the legal expert notes: “The only tight deadline is basically that for the award of the Bavarian Climate Protection Prize, which is annually awarded, ”he writes.
Climate lawsuits also planned against corporations
In addition to the constitutional court ruling in April, the Berlin law professor and the DUH had already won a number of spectacular lawsuits in environmental law, including a ruling by the Federal Administrative Court that obliges municipalities to comply with nitrogen oxide limit values, which in many cities are particularly due to the exhaust gases from diesel engines be crossed, be exceeded, be passed.
In a next step, according to SPIEGEL information, the environmental association is planning three more complaints against energy and car companies.
Klinger is currently working on the briefs, which should then be submitted in August.
The model for this is a judgment from the Netherlands from the end of May, through which the Shell oil company was obliged to make significantly stronger climate protection efforts.
