Landmark ruling from German top court: key climate legislation falls short

Germany’s Constitutional Court has found in a landmark ruling that key parts of the country's climate legislation are insufficient. The court said Germany's Climate Action Law is partly unconstitutional and obliged the government to introduce details on greenhouse gas reduction targets for the period after 2030 by the end of next year.

"The challenged provisions do violate the freedoms of the complainants, some of whom are still very young," the court said in a statement with reference to climate activists who had filed the complaint with support from several environmental NGOs. "The provisions irreversibly offload major emission reduction burdens onto periods after 2030."

Legal experts said the decision is unexpected and unprecedented in Germany and will have far-reaching effects. “Climate action has been significantly strengthened by the Federal Constitutional Court today,” Thorsten Müller, head of Stiftung Umweltenergierecht (foundation for research on energy and environment law), told Clean Energy Wire. “So far, we have not had any successful lawsuits for more climate action in German jurisdiction.”

He called the decision “historic,” as for the first time the court made very clear that a violation of the state’s obligation to protect the “natural foundations of life,” which it said includes climate protection, could constitute a violation of the fundamental rights of citizens. Citizens now have a process to sue, but lawsuits for more climate action “are unlikely to succeed in most cases, unless we are in the situation where the state violates its objective duty to protect,” he explained. Concrete climate policy would still be decided in the political process.

The German court's decision follows a rising number of similar cases across the world. In the first decision of its kind, the Netherland's Supreme Court in 2019 upheld a ruling by a lower court forcing the government to meet emission reduction targets. The case not only inspired German activists, but also similar climate justice lawsuits in many other countries, including Belgium, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Britain, Switzerland and Norway.

The court said Germany’s Basic Law – the country’s constitution – obliges the state to protect the climate, which includes reaching the target of climate neutrality. The court did not prescribe when or how this goal should be reached, but said the German government had already decided to try to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and preferably to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as prescribed by the Paris Climate Agreement. The court argued that the emissions reduction provisions in the climate law violate the complainants’ freedoms guaranteed by Basic Law.

To reach the Paris targets, the post-2030 goals would have to be achieved faster and more urgently, it said. “These future obligations to reduce emissions have an impact on practically every type of freedom because virtually all aspects of human life still involve the emission of greenhouse gases and are thus potentially threatened by drastic restrictions after 2030,” said the court, adding that the legislator should have taken precautionary steps to mitigate these major burdens in order to safeguard the freedom guaranteed by fundamental rights.

Government representatives from conservatives and Social Democrats entered a sort of blame game after the publication of the ruling. Environment minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) said she would have liked to include another interim target for the 2030s, “but there was no majority for this” in the negotiations in 2019. Her Social Democrat colleague and chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz publicly criticised CDU economy minister Peter Altmaier: “To the best of my recollection, you and the CDU/CSU have prevented exactly what has now been called for by the Federal Constitutional Court. But we can quickly correct that. Are you with us?” Schulze said she would present key points for a reform of the climate law in summer.

Altmaier did not talk about the 2019 negotiations, but replied that he already proposed post-2030 interim targets in his call for a “historic consensus” on climate among all German parties in September 2020, which in turn was not answered by the SPD.

At a press conference, Altmaier said that the ruling was of “extraordinary importance” for climate protection, the rights of young people and for the planning security of German businesses. “We have set into motion many things in the past years. Some of them came late, maybe too late,” Altmaier said. He added that the ruling must be respected and implemented. “I see this ruling as a gift, because it means that climate action is put back on the agenda before the general election.” He said he would present his fellow ministers with suggestions in the coming weeks on how the government could ensure that climate policy making wasn’t delayed by the elections and the ensuing creation of a new government.

German parties have swung into full campaign mode for the national election in September, after both the Conservatives and the Green Party presented their chancellor candidates last week. This also means that a decision on the reform of the climate law will be up to the next government, in which the Greens could play an important role, maybe even providing the chancellor.

The party’s candidate, Annalena Baerbock, welcomed the ruling. Calling it a "historic decision" on twitter, she wrote that it gave a concrete mandate to revise the climate action law now. "Climate action protects our freedom and the freedom of our children and grandchildren [...] The next few years are crucial for consistent action," she said.

“Meanwhile, the Greens' chancellor candidate floats serenely above it all, hailing the ‘historic decision’,” commented journalist Tom Nuttall on Twitter.