Germany’s Greens party has written a “net zero” commitment into the country’s constitution, which legal experts say could be used in court to make governments enforce carbon emissions cuts.
“For the first time, our goal of climate neutrality by 2045 is included in the constitution,” said Matthias Miersch, a Bundestag member from the Social Democratic Party (SDP) on March 14.
With a goal of net emissions by 2045 now written into Germany’s Constitution, one law professor warned that “green” activists could try to use the country’s Constitutional Court to force the new coalition government away from its election promises and pursue more green-friendly policies instead.
Including the net zero goal in the Basic Law was a “constitutionally high-risk action”, said law professor Josef Franz Lindner from the University of Augsburg.
Putting the language in the constitution now meant it was possible “that the Federal Constitutional Court, following lawsuits from NGOs, will interpret ‘Climate Neutrality by 2045’ as a binding constitutional mandate for the state“, he said.
The outgoing Bundestag, or lower house, in a special session, passed a new 143rd amendment to the Basic Law on March 16 enshrining reaching net zero by 2045 in the Constitution.
Net zero refers to a state where carbon emissions have been cut to a small amount that can be absorbed and stored by nature.
The two parliamentary leaders of The Greens group, Britta Hasselmann and Katharina Dröge, had successfully pushed for the amendment in an all-night negotiating session over coalition formation with incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The three, along with SDP leader Lars Klingbeil, discussed details until 5am and then resumed negotiations in the morning after a short break, said the Munich daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on March 14.
The three parties agreed to the net-zero amendment as part of repealing a balanced budget amendment, or debt brake, which former chancellor Angela Merkel’s first government introduced in 2009.
Under the debt brake, Germany’s Federal Government could not issue debt or run budget deficits exceeding 0.35 per cent of GDP.
Despite that, under the newly amended constitution, the incoming coalition would be able to create a debt-financed €500 billion infrastructure special fund.
The Greens agreed to support the constitutional changes — which required a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag — to make this special fund possible in return for a constitutional requirement that €100 billion from the special fund would go to fund net-zero projects through a new Climate and Transformation Fund.
The two Greens leaders joined the negotiations “to ensure that the money went in the right direction”, said Hasselmann and Dröge.
The Greens also managed to add tight restrictions ensuring the special fund would go to fund new investments and not to relieve the core budget.
Their success has meant the CDU and SPD would now have less financial leeway to pursue their often expensive campaign promises.
Merz’s CDU had promised new funding for the Bundeswehr, Germany’s army, and tax breaks to encourage private investment.
The SPD promised to cut income taxes for 95 per cent of Germans but also to retain the citizen’s allowance (Bürgergeld), a programme of income support for the long-term unemployed.
Yet the three parties’ 5am agreement to include the net-zero pledge in the Constitution was a sign of victory for Germany’s democratic centre, claimed Klingbeil.
For Merz, though, it represented a different direction to the one on which he had campaigned.
While promising to respect the 2045 net-zero target during the electionn campaign, Merz’s CDU pledged to prop up Germany’s ailing automotive industry, abolish an upcoming EU-enforced ban on combustion engines and to retract a heating law requiring the gradual phasing out of oil and natural-gas heating systems in Germany.
According to Lindner, though the presence of the net-zero goal in the Constitution meant German courts could rule some of these goals would now need to take back seat to priorities closer to The Greens’ agenda.
