After the Heating Act, the CDU Bundestag member Heilmann is now also involving the Constitutional Court in the Climate Protection Act. He wants to prevent it from being passed in the Bundestag on Friday.
The CDU member of the Bundestag Thomas Heilmann is intervening in Karlsruhe for the second time on an important law of the federal government. He is taking the reform of the Climate Protection Act to the Federal Constitutional Court. Heilmann requested an interim order stopping the law, his office in Berlin confirmed.
Last summer, the court stopped the adoption of the heating law, for which Heilmann had criticized the tight schedule. The law was then passed by the Bundestag in September.
Heilmann’s criticism: the process was too quick
Heilmann now justifies the step towards the Climate Protection Act, similar to the successful proceedings against the Heating Act, with what he sees as the legislative process being too quick.
The First Parliamentary Managing Director of the Greens, Irene Mihalic, had previously rejected the Union faction’s concerns. “Well, we’re not speeding anything up, it’s a completely normal procedure, and that’s why we have no problem doing it that way,” she said on Wednesday morning, before Heilmann’s application in Karlsruhe, in response to criticism from the opposition.
The latest changes to the draft law have been before MPs for days. “Everyone has had the opportunity to deal with this and so we don’t see why the legislative process cannot go ahead as planned,” she said.
The Bundestag is due to decide on Friday
Heilmann fears that climate protection will be weakened. The government is “unacceptably weakening climate protection goals,” he told the dpa news agency. In addition, the errors are “more massive” than with the heating law.
With his interim order he wants to prevent the Bundestag from passing the law on Friday. From Heilmann’s point of view, far-reaching changes are planned, which is why the MPs need time to examine them.
Environmental groups had criticized the reform as watering down the current rules. The German Environmental Aid (DUH), for example, criticizes that after the reform, additional efforts to achieve the climate goals of later years will only be required from 2030 – which ultimately postpones climate protection into the future.
The bone of contention of the traffic light coalition
The possible weakening of climate protection with the reform has long been a contentious issue among the coalition parties. Surprisingly, the government tabled an amendment last week.
The following applies so far: If individual sectors such as transport or buildings fail to meet legal requirements for CO2 emissions, the responsible ministries must submit emergency programs in the following year. That should change in the future: Compliance with climate targets should no longer be checked retroactively by sector, but rather over several years with a view to the future and across sectors.
Only when it becomes apparent in two consecutive years that the federal government is not on track to meet its climate target for 2030 will it have to make adjustments.
By 2030, Germany must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 65 percent compared to 1990. Climate neutrality should be achieved by 2045. Then no more greenhouse gases can be emitted or captured again.