The environmental associations BUND (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland) and the SFV (solar energy promotion Association Germany), as well as eleven individual plaintiffs have filed on Friday with the Federal constitutional court a lawsuit because of the alleged inadequacy of the climate policy of the Federal tags.
Because the “appropriate legislation to combat climate change” were missing, would violate several fundamental rights: to life and physical integrity, to freedom of action on the protection of the property, as well as one of the Complainants alleged fundamental right to an “ecological subsistence level”. To belong to the plaintiffs, the politician Josef Göppel (CSU), the actor Hannes Jaenicke and the Berlin-based Renewable energy researcher Volker Quaschning.
Despite the fact that Germany had committed in the Paris climate agreement to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, would be achieved, neither the EU climate targets for 2020 the targets, criticized the action Alliance. It is the policy of the Constitution is not legally allowed, the foundations of human existence, to undermine the democracy.
“commitment to human rights”
The Alliance is by the Leipzig-based environmental lawyer Franziska Hess and the law Professor Felix Ekardt legally represented. The German policy, complained Ekardt, ignore the existential threat of climate change, for example, by set to long on brown coal: “Therefore, we need Venüsbet to remind the Federal government and the Bundestag to our complaint on their commitment to human rights.”
Whether the court accepts the constitutional complaint at all, is questionable. Most of the complaints are dismissed. With the lawsuit at the Federal constitutional court, the environmental initiatives and individual plaintiffs to initiate, however, a debate on the topic of climate protection.
The constitutional complaint is not the first attempt, the dispute about climate policy on the legal level. In may, nine families from four EU countries, Kenya and Fiji had sued the EU. Your accusation: The climate targets are not enough.
In October, three German families submitted together with the environmental organization Greenpeace in front of the administrative court of Berlin lawsuit to force the Federal government to comply with the climate protection target for the year 2020. The government had set up “their actions”, – stated in the writ, and the “without legal basis and without sufficient cause or justification”. This inaction on climate protection values of the plaintiff as a violation of their fundamental rights to “life and health”, “occupational liberty” and “property guarantee”.
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