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Thuringian state parliament in Erfurt
Photo: Martin Schutt / dpa
The Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) will not decide on an appeal against a judgment on a law that provided for parity lists in Thuringia for state elections.
The second senate of the BVerfG in Karlsruhe announced that the constitutional complaint of several voters – some members of parties – was inadmissible. The violation of "fundamental rights and guarantees equivalent to fundamental rights" had not been adequately explained, it said. The decision of the Thuringian Constitutional Court from July 2020, according to which joint electoral lists are unconstitutional, will therefore not be reopened.
At that time, the court in Weimar overturned a law passed in 2019 with the votes of the Left, SPD and Greens, which was intended to increase the proportion of women in parliament in the future. The so-called parity law stipulated that the list positions of all parties for state elections must in future be occupied alternately by women and men. On the other hand, the AfD had sued because they saw the right of the parties to determine which candidates they would put up for the state elections violated.
The Thuringian constitutional court followed the lawsuit, arguing that the law infringed on the right to freedom and equality of choice.
The voters can no longer decide freely whether they want to send more women or more men to parliament.
Freedom of choice also means the right to stand for election without state restrictions.
In 2020, the constitutional court in Brandenburg also annulled a parity law that provided for fixed places for women on electoral lists.
Women are underrepresented in the German state parliaments and also in the Bundestag.
In the Bundestag, the proportion had risen at least slightly after the election – to 35 percent of all MPs.
The Greens and the Left are the only parties that now have more women than men in the Bundestag.
In the SPD it is around 42 percent, in the Union and FDP, on the other hand, less than a quarter of the deputies are female.
With 13 percent women, the AfD brings up the rear in the parity ranking.
fek/AFP
