Changes to the Basic Law should come
Traffic light and the Union want to protect the Constitutional Court from the AfD
January 30, 2024, 12:56 a.m
The government wants to make the Federal Constitutional Court more resistant to “enemies of democracy”. The traffic light coalition’s considerations find support in the Union. A change to the Basic Law is apparently imminent.
The traffic light factions and the Union want to change the Basic Law together in order to protect the Federal Constitutional Court from attacks by the AfD. This was reported by the Editorial Network Germany (RND), citing coalition and opposition circles. They said they “agreed in principle”. The change to the Basic Law should come soon. The aim is to avoid a situation like that in Poland, where the Constitutional Court came under pressure from the then ruling Law and Justice party (PiS). A two-thirds majority is required to change the Basic Law, which the government factions alone do not have.
The deputy chairman of the Green parliamentary group, Konstantin von Notz, told the RND: “It is necessary and right to now discuss quickly and decide how we can better protect the Federal Constitutional Court, which is extremely important for our democracy.” It is important to “fully include the CDU and CSU in the deliberations right from the start. Because the Union, as the largest opposition faction in the federal government and with its responsibility in numerous federal states, is a crucial political force for the success of this process,” said von Notz. With a view to numerous anti-AfD demonstrations in the past few days and weeks, he added: “The largest and broadest demonstrations in decades in our country, in which millions of people take to the streets for our democracy, show that our constitutional state is strong and is defensive against his enemies.”
The parliamentary managing director of the SPD parliamentary group, Johannes Fechner, had previously explained to “Welt am Sonntag”: “According to the Basic Law, the Federal Constitutional Court Act can be changed with a simple majority. We should make this a two-thirds majority.”
The parliamentary managing director of the FDP parliamentary group, Stephan Thomae, also pleaded with the paper for more resilience against the “enemies of democracy”. As examples, Thomae cited “the division of the court into two senates, the stipulation of the twelve-year term of office of judges and the stipulation that the court can decide on its own distribution of business and its working methods.” These rules could then only be changed with a two-thirds majority.
He warned that otherwise, with a simple parliamentary majority, the Constitutional Court could be “paralysed as one of the most important checks on power and guardian of the constitution.” Theoretically, a third Senate could be set up and the distribution of responsibilities changed so that “certain decisions would have to be made in this third Senate.”