The center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) have come one step closer to their goal of forming a coalition government. This involved likely new Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) making major concessions to the Greens in order to get his ambitious plan for hundreds of billions of euros in investments off the ground.

Without the Greens, whose losses in February's federal election means they're soon to be in opposition, Merz's plan would not have worked.

The future governing partners are planning a budget that will see Germany take on an extra €500 billion in debt for investment in infrastructure. However, this requires a change to the constititution which in turn can only be decided with a two-thirds majority in both chambers of parliament. To achieve this, the CDU bloc and SPD needed the votes of the Greens in the lower house, the Bundestag, this Tuesday (March 18).

The Greens demanded that €100 billion of the package go into the Climate Transformation Fund (Klima Transformationsfonds) and their demands were eventually met.

Does climate protection now have constitutional status?

Under pressure from the Greens, the text of the amendment to the Basic Law now states that the planned special fund of €500 billion is earmarked for "investments in infrastructure and for additional investments to achieve climate neutrality by 2045."

The last part of the wording caused quite a stir among many conservatives and part of the business community. Is climate neutrality by 2045 being written into the constitution as a national objective? Would that mean that all other infrastructure investments would have to be subordinate to it?

Former judge at the Federal Constitutional Court, Udo Di Fabio, thinks not. "This does not result in a state objective of climate protection with a commitment to climate neutrality by 2045," he says.

Christian Calliess, Professor of Constitutional and Environmental Law at the Free University of Berlin, agrees with that assessment. The wording merely clarifies that part of the "special infrastructure fund" must be used for climate protection, he told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

The "state objective of environmental protection," is already enshrined in the constitution and this includes climate protection. In 2021, Germany's high court ruled that legislators must not favor current generations by placing an excessive burden on future generations. On this basis, individuals can also sue the state if they believe their civil liberties are endangered by measures that supposedly jeopardize climate protection.

Nevertheless, quite a few politicians are concerned that Merz has gone too far in his concessions towards the Greens.

Wolfgang Kubicki of the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) told the newspaper Welt: "There will be a large number of lawsuits on the grounds that these investments would run counter to the 2045 climate protection target. The burden of proof will then lie with the state. That will be difficult."

Greens celebrate

Meanwhile, the Greens are celebrating a major victory, perhaps the biggest since they formed a governing coalition with the FDP and the SPD in the fall of 2021. From the outset, they had intended to invest billions of euros in climate protection. But the plan to reallocate money left from a fund set up to mitigate the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic was struck down by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2023, scuppering the ambitious plans.

This, plus other major budget disputes, were partly why the center-left government of the SPD, Greens and FDP fell apart in November last year.

This article was originally written in German.

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