BERLIN — This week, it was supposed to finally be over. But as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz celebrated at his party’s summer festivities, the German Constitutional Court ruled that the Building Energy Act, which had caused fierce dispute in the coalition for several months, could not be passed by the Bundestag this week.
In an emergency petition to the court, Thomas Heilmann, a Christian Democratic Union lawmaker, argued parliament was not given enough time to discuss the heating law. The court ruled in his favor on Wednesday.
“Members of parliament not only have the right to vote in the German Bundestag, but also the right to deliberate,” the court argued in its statement.
The law aimed at reforming heating systems in German households has led to extensive discussion within the governing coalition. The Greens wanted to ban the installation of gas heating as early as the beginning of 2024 while the liberals fought for laxer rules. When the government found a compromise in mid-June after several months of debate, it planned to push it through the parliamentary process as quickly as possible — too quickly, according to the Constitutional Court.
Experts called it a historic decision. “I cannot recall any comparable case in its history in which the Federal Constitutional Court has intervened so strongly in the work of the Bundestag,” said Christoph Degenhart, a former judge at the Constitutional Court of Saxony and emeritus professor of constitutional law at the University of Leipzig.
So at 9:40 p.m., the party next to the Chancellor’s Office was over for Scholz and his confidants as they embarked on a crisis meeting in a tent overlooking the celebrations.
Now, the heating law — one of the biggest coalition disputes — will not be resolved before the summer recess as planned.
Heilmann said in a press conference Thursday morning he did the government a favor by “saving it from passing a formally unconstitutional law.”
The CDU lawmaker has been outspoken for several years, including under the CDU-led government of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, that lawmakers are not involved in enough legislative procedures, resulting in the Bundestag suffering “from haste, agitation and thus a lack of diligence.”
Various parliamentary groups in the Bundestag must work together to establish minimum procedures for urgent legislation, Heilmann said.
The leaders of the three governing parties‘ parliamentary groups responded to the decision Thursday in a joint statement: “We have respect for the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court.” They requested the Building Energy Act be added to the agenda of the Bundestag for the next regular parliamentary session in early September for a vote.
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who played a key role in developing the Building Energy Act, called this a “good move” on Thursday.
The court will probably make a decision before the end of the year, Degenhart said. “In practice, the Bundestag will then have to comply with these requirements in the future. Therefore, the lawmakers should first wait for this decision,” he added.
Now, as the law will not be passed until early September at the very earliest, opposition parties could make it a major issue in the election campaigns for the state elections in Bavaria and Hesse in early October.
