The trial before the Bolzano Regional Court lasted almost two years and outraged environmentalists throughout Europe. He ended with an acquittal on Friday. The Green member of the Bundestag and former environmental activist Karl Bär from Munich does not have to fear a fine or compensation payments in the millions. He was the last of a whole series of conservationists who had denounced the use of pesticides in South Tyrolean apple orchards and were therefore taken to court by fruit growers and the representative of the local state government responsible for agriculture. However, the debate about the use of chemicals in the largest contiguous apple-growing region in Europe is far from over with the verdict.
“Inadmissibility of the procedure,” Karl Baer shouted at his cheering supporters as he left the courtroom on Friday. This is the legal justification for the acquittal. According to Italian law, “inadmissible” means that the criminal court no longer sees itself as having jurisdiction over the case. Because all 1376 plaintiffs and complainants had withdrawn their criminal complaints. The public prosecutor dismissed the last charge of “counterfeiting” on the last day of the trial and turned it into an accusation of defamation. Counterfeiting would have been an official offense that should have been prosecuted even after the plaintiffs withdrew. The accusation of defamation, on the other hand, expires because there are no longer any plaintiffs.
The cause of the proceedings was extremely minor
This is how a process comes to an end, which not only Karl Bär sees as a “pure political attempt at intimidation”. “The trial was a farce from the start and should never have been opened,” he said. The reason for this was extremely small. In the summer of 2017, large-format photo posters from the Munich Environmental Institute hung in the basement of the Munich Stachus for just three days. The images alienated an image campaign for the South Tyrol tourist region in a satirical way. Instead of breathtaking landscape shots, an apple farmer was seen in what was assumed to be a cloud of pesticides that he was spraying on his orchard. You have to know: South Tyrol is the orchard of Europe, every tenth apple eaten in Europe grows there, a total of 7,000 producers grow fruit on an area equivalent to around 20,000 soccer fields.
In South Tyrol, there was a correspondingly sensitive reaction to the action that Bär was responsible for. He is now a member of the Bundestag, back then he was still the agricultural consultant at the Environmental Institute.
And then there was also the documentary film, which was unflattering for South Tyrol, and the book “Das Wunder von Mals” by the Austrian author Alexander Schiebel about the South Tyrolean village of the same name, whose inhabitants (including fruit farmers) had decided against using pesticides in their fields, but then were called back by the country and lobbyists. So the minister responsible for agriculture, Landesrat Arnold Schuler and said 1376 fruit growers launched a major counterattack. They reported Bär and other people in charge of the environmental institute, Schiebel and his Munich book publisher for “complicated defamation”. The environmental activists were threatened with severe penalties and damages in the millions.
Thousands of environmental activists showed solidarity with the accused
They were legal attacks, which were probably intended to serve one goal in particular: to intimidate the environmental activists and deter any imitators. “Slapp” is the name of such lawsuits (an abbreviation for strategic lawsuit against participation), which are not about the law, but about silencing disagreeable voices. Thousands of politicians and environmental activists from all over Europe, who showed solidarity with Karl Bär, Alexander Schiebel and Co., also saw it that way.
The proceedings in Bolzano, which ended on Friday, developed into a political non-starter for its initiators. In the course of the investigation, the Italian prosecution authorities confiscated the orchard logs of all the complaining fruit growers, in which they documented their use of chemicals over the years. On the way to inspecting the files in court, the information got into the hands of the Munich environmental activists – an unprecedented record on the subject. Provincial Councilor Schuler and the fruit growers retreated and withdrew their complaints. The proceedings against Schiebel and Oekom publisher Jacob Radloff were quickly ended. Only Bär was still in the dock at the end.
He was tired, said Bär, as he nervously paced up and down the courtroom before the last day of the hearing. Tired after two years of process. But otherwise he doesn’t see it all very emotionally. It’s not about feelings, it’s about freedom of expression. Bär was typing around on his mobile phone, as if he were already busy with new projects in his head. But when the judge pronounced his verdict, when his colleagues from the Munich Environmental Institute who had traveled with him cheered and applauded outside the hall, when the big door opened and he was able to go out to them as a free person, he seemed relieved.