German court ‘committed’ to European integration

Germany’s highest court is committed to European integration, its president told an audience in Dublin yesterday. Legal scholar Prof Andreas Vosskühle said that Germany’s constitution, the Basic Law – and by extension the court itself – was open to European law and explicitly called for Germany’s participation in the process of European integration.

But while the Basic Law did not erect "flood barriers" to stop European integration, he added, it did put limits on integration to preserve the identity of the Germany constitution. In its decision on the Treaty of Lisbon, for example, the court, based in Karlsruhe, established that the Basic Law did not permit accession to a European federal state that "would mean relinquishing the state sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany".

Prof Vosskühle said a second limitation on the transfer of sovereign powers to the EU was a provision in the Basic Law that the fundamental structural principles of the German state may not be relinquished. “They are the core content of the Basic Law’s constitutional identity,” he told a seminar at the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin.

The international focus on Germany during the euro zone debt crisis has raised the Karlsruhe court's profile abroad. In recent years, it has ordered greater co-determination for the Bundestag on bailouts and placed limits on German participation in European integration under the Basic Law.

The court’s increasingly critical role in Germany’s European debate arises partly from its interpretation of the so-called eternity clause in the Basic Law. This states that certain principles in the constitution – human dignity and basic principles of democratic rule – cannot be overturned. Every European constitutional challenge is fed through Karlsruhe’s reading of the “eternity clause”.

‘Sharing of responsibility’

Prof Vosskühle said his court’s relationship with the European Court of Justice should be seen as a “sharing of responsibility ... The federal constitutional court supports the process of European integration within the material scope of the Basic Law, while the European Court of Justice operates purely according to the yardstick of EU law. This does not rule out conflicts, but overall we have managed very well.”