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Annette Beese, presiding judge at the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court (OLG), opens the process.
© Uli Deck/dpa
How disruptive can protests by climate activists be? When are road blockades punishable as coercion?
The Higher Regional Court in Karlsruhe had to deal with this question for the first time.
There is initially no answer.
Karlsruhe - The Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court (OLG) overturned an acquittal on Tuesday for coercion in the case of a road blockade by a climate activist.
The verdict of the Freiburg district court, which acquitted a 32-year-old climate activist of this accusation, was incomplete.
According to the presiding judge, a fundamental decision cannot be made on this basis.
In the present case, the 32-year-old sat down on the street with his colleagues on three different days in 2022 and blocked traffic.
The court referred the case back to another chamber in Freiburg.
It must now shed light on exactly how long the blockades actually lasted and whether the road users affected had the opportunity to bypass the blockade.
These findings depend, among other things, on whether the coercion was “reprehensible” in the legal sense and therefore punishable.
The Higher Regional Court Senate also pointed out that the defendant did not just want to point out climate change and a necessary change in transport, but above all the problem of food waste.
The drivers have nothing to do with food waste, but were only chosen to suffer from the blockade in order to attract media attention.
The freedom of assembly of the activists and the impairment of the freedom of movement of road users were also conflicting interests.
The district court did not weigh this up sufficiently.
The climate activists, who had gathered in front of the courthouse for a vigil before the hearing, reacted cautiously to the OLG's decision.
It should also be seen as an opportunity that the district court now has to make new findings on the offense of coercion.
The activists had drawn attention to their concerns with posters such as “Protest must be allowed to disrupt” and “Climate protection is not reprehensible”.
In his last word, which lasted around 30 minutes, the defendant once again highlighted the dangers of climate change in detail.
According to the district court, the actions as such were not reprehensible and therefore not punishable.
This would only have been the case if the defendant had endangered other road users, for example.
The public prosecutor's office appealed against this legal assessment.
In Baden-Württemberg, a higher regional court dealt with such a case for the first time.
Nationwide, other high courts in individual federal states had already viewed such blockades as coercion: a week ago, the Berlin Court of Appeal confirmed a man's conviction for coercion after a road blockade.
The Bavarian Supreme Court ruled in a similar case last year and convicted a teenager of coercion after a road blockade.
In the southwest, climate activists have been convicted several times by lower courts for this.
The Heilbronn district court decided in March and April last year that three activists had to go to prison for several months without parole - and fines were imposed on others.
The previous year, the Stuttgart district court had also sentenced “last generation” climate activists to fines for coercion.
dpa