The German Environmental Aid (DUH) wants to put the state government under pressure on climate policy with three lawsuits. The DUH has lodged a complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court, filed a popular action with the Bavarian Constitutional Court and appealed to the Bavarian Administrative Court (VGH).
The plaintiffs in Karlsruhe and before the Constitutional Court are ten children and young adults from Bavaria. They accuse the Free State of massively limiting their chances in life because they are doing too little to protect the climate.
Lukas S., 20, from Munich and active at Fridays for Future, is one of them, the nine and seven year old brothers Kaspar S. and Friedl S. are two others. The boys are very worried about the hotter and drier summers. And they wish, for example, that children after them can still go tobogganing in winter. With the third lawsuit before the VGH, the DUH wants to force a climate protection program from the Free State, which from their point of view is good enough to keep the promise of the black and orange government coalition to meet the 1.5 degree target of the Paris climate protection treaty.
Amendment to the Bavarian Climate Protection Act announced
The state government reacted calmly to the actions of the environmental aid, which had achieved great success in recent years with its complaints about air pollution. State Chancellor Florian Herrmann (CSU) said on Tuesday after the cabinet that he assumed that the lawsuits would become irrelevant due to the new Bavarian climate protection law.
Prime Minister Markus Söder announced that he would amend the law, emphasized Herrmann. It is a “question of the next few months” to dedicate oneself to the project. Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber (FW) also referred to the revision of the Climate Protection Act. And this should also be known to the DUH.
“We can’t buy anything from announcements”
The state government’s criticism, according to which the complaints relate to an outdated state of affairs and are therefore superfluous, leaves DUH managing director Sascha Müller-Kraenner cold.
“We can’t buy anything from announcements,” he says. “With our lawsuit against the currently valid Climate Protection Act, we want to ensure that the state government and the state parliament take it seriously.” Especially since Söder could already have responded and reformulated the Bavarian climate protection law. “The federal government showed the way,” says Müller-Kraenner. “He passed his new climate protection law on July 1st.” In Bavaria, on the other hand, nothing happened “except for promises and the announcement of a government declaration”.
It was Söder who announced immediate consequences for Bavaria immediately after the decision by which the Karlsruhe constitutional judges obliged the federal government to tighten its climate protection law at the end of April. And Glauber wanted to present the draft for the new Bavarian climate protection law in May.
The young plaintiffs and the DUH are of course much more concerned than Söder and Glauber’s political pace. As experts have done before, they are calling for a binding step-by-step plan for reducing CO₂ emissions in Bavaria, concrete measures for implementation and regular reviews of whether the Free State can actually be climate-neutral. The three lawsuits provide the state government with the foil for a climate protection law and measures that meet the constitutional requirements, as can be derived from the Karlsruhe resolution on the federal climate protection law from the end of April.
If the lawsuits are successful, Söder has no choice
Because that is the biggest deficit of the Bavarian climate protection policy: It does not go beyond mere declarations of intent. In the words of the DUH lawyer Klinger: “The Bavarian Climate Protection Act contains – apart from the annual award of the Bavarian Climate Protection Prize – no deadlines to ensure that the much too low climate protection targets can be achieved.”
Should the DUH be successful before the courts, which Klinger firmly assumes after the Karlsruhe decision against the federal government, Söder would have no choice: He would have to anchor the required step-by-step plan up to climate neutrality, as well as the package of measures and the evaluation in the new climate protection law – so as experts and large parts of the state parliament opposition have been calling for since the start of the debate a year ago.
Greens: “Obviously, the only thing that helps is pressure”
The Greens and the SPD are also behind the DUH. “Obviously, the only thing that helps is pressure through legal action to drive Söder to an effective climate protection law,” says Green Party leader Ludwig Hartmann. “Söder’s climate protection headlines are far from making an effective climate protection policy.” Anyone who, like Söder, believes that everything can actually stay as it is, only with a little bit of climate protection on top, denies reality – and that “at the expense of our children and grandchildren”.
SPD parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn welcomes the complaints. In his view, the Bavarian Climate Protection Act is “not in the least suitable for meeting the Paris climate protection goals”. He calls the measures a “hodgepodge of shopkeepers” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/. “Hard areas”, such as the controversial distance rule between wind turbines and residential areas or a consistent expansion of local public transport, “which also cost something” , were left out.
The parliamentary group leaders of the FDP and AfD do not believe in the lawsuits. “We can only achieve effective climate protection through a clear regulatory framework on a European and global level,” says the liberal Martin Hagen, “not through national politics”. He sees the DUH’s complaints as “a PR gag”. Ingo Hahn (AfD) criticizes the “planned economy”, he accuses the DUH of relying “on young people and children because their political goals are only perceived in public in an emotional way”.