Neubauer v Germany
Neubauer v Germany was a landmark German constitutional law case, concerning the duty of the German federal government to take action to prevent climate damage. In this court case, which was decided on 24 March 2021, a group of activists sued over the vagueness present in the 2019's Climate Protection Act. The German Constitutional Court declared the Federal Climate Protection Act partly unconstitutional because it did not sufficiently protect young people against future infringements and limitations of their existing fundamental rights because of climate change.
Facts
Activists backed by Fridays For Future, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and other NGOs brought a claim that the lack of a comprehensive legal framework to reduce carbon emissions by 2030 violated their fundamental rights as enshrined in German basic law. The complaint specifically called out that the state had to protect the right to life, personal freedom, right to property, and human dignity.Luisa Neubauer and others brought a constitutional complaint against the Federal Climate Change Act, that the Germany government was not acting quickly enough to comply with constitutional rights in the Grundgesetz 1949, including the right to life and the duty to protect the environment.
Judgment
The Constitutional Court declared in its ruling on 24 March 2021 part of the Federal Climate Protection Act unconstitutional, as it did not "sufficiently protect people against future infringements and limitations of freedom rights in the wake of gradually intensifying climate change". It ruled against some of their claims, saying the plaintiffs could not prove the government violated its constitutional duty.The finance minister responded to the ruling by saying that he would work with the environment ministry to amend the act. The environmental minister wrote that she would present new climate proposals over the summer.
The German Constitutional Court held that the government had a duty to speed up its climate protection measures, as part of its constitutional duty to protect the rights to life and the environment under, respectively, article2 and article20a of the Grundgesetz 1949. It held that the causal link between manmade emissions and climate change, that all release of CO2 caused more warming, and that any carbon budget was limited. It rejected that because Germany could not stop global warming alone, it did not have responsibility: on the contrary it was necessary that Germany undertook action to encourage others to do so and international cooperation.
The German Constitutional Court said that the state cannot delay mitigation action if this would have the predictable effect of aggrieving future generations. The court also held that there is an obligation on the state to revisit the inter-temporal distribution effects of its climate laws and to equitably distribute allowable emissions over time and generations. This required the legislature to change existing climate laws by setting out clear provisions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 2031 onward by the end of 2022.
The Court said the following.