Status: 11.01.2022 10:41 a.m.
No nuclear shipments in Bremen: With this aim, the red-green Bremen government issued a transshipment ban in 2012. The Federal Constitutional Court has now ruled that Bremen has exceeded its competencies.
The ban on transporting nuclear power via ports in Bremen violates the Basic Law. The Federal Constitutional Court declared the regulation null and void because the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen lacks the legislative competence to issue such a handling ban.
The highest German court in Karlsruhe announced that the federal government alone has this for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The Second Senate, chaired by maritime law expert Doris König, referred to Article 73 of the Basic Law in its decision of December 7th, which has now been published.
Bremen wanted to put pressure on the federal government
In 2015, the Bremen Administrative Court approached the Constitutional Court with the question of whether the Bremen regulation violated the Basic Law and the so-called principle of federal loyalty, which prohibits the federal state’s legislative competence from being circumvented. The Bremen citizenship had issued the ban on the transport of nuclear fuels. The then red-green Bremen government closed the ports in 2012 to the handling of such material through the Port Operation Act. This is how pressure should be put on the federal government.
A fuel element manufacturer from Lingen, a nuclear transport company from Hanau and a company for nuclear waste disposal from Essen had applied for special permits to stop loading, unloading and reloading. According to the court announcement, they all have transport permits from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection under the Atomic Energy Act, “in which the transport route via the ports of Bremen is expressly permitted as a transport route”. The state government rejected exceptions. That’s why the companies went to court.