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DW
a day ago
- Politics
- DW
How far-right social media impacted Germany's highest court – DW – 07/18/2025
Researchers say a far-right social media campaign — that painted a respected law professor as extremist — caused the suspension of the election of judges to Germany's highest court. Whenever there's talk of a crisis of democracy in Germany, leading politicians proudly point to the well-established independence of the "judges from Karlsruhe" — that is, the judges who sit on the Federal Constitutional Court, which is based in the southern German city. The Federal Constitutional Court is one of the highest courts in Germany and is also seen as the "fifth organ" of the country's political system, alongside the presidency, the parliament or Bundestag, the federal government and the Bundesrat, the federal council of German states. Unlike the Federal Criminal Court, which is the highest court for civil and criminal justice, the Federal Constitutional Court's job is to ensure that Germany's Basic Law — its constitution — is upheld. It is seen as the guardian of Germans' basic rights. The Federal Constitutional Court is also the only court that can decide about banning a political party. The court's decisions are widely recognized and often offer a course correction for ruling political parties. All of this is why last week's failure to elect three new judges to the Federal Constitutional Court has been so controversial. There are 16 judges on the bench, all of whom can serve 12 years. Half of them are chosen by the Bundesrat, the council of leaders of Germany's 16 states and the other half by parliament, the Bundestag. In both cases, there must be a two-thirds majority for a judge to be successfully elected. The procedure is always highly political because the court is seen as a pillar of German democracy, a symbol of the separation of powers in the German system and a defense against any politics that work against German citizens' basic rights. Although the process has never been as emotionally heated as the selection of judges for the US' Supreme Court, there have been occasional controversies around candidates. One such instance was the 2011 candidature of lawyer Peter Müller. Müller was also a politician and had only just resigned from his post as the state prime minister of Saarland. He is also a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU. Obviously he was not a neutral candidate for the court — he had openly been against the immigration policies of the then-left-leaning federal government — and his application was viewed with some skepticism. Despite this, the Bundesrat voted unanimously to appoint him to the Federal Constitutional Court. Those voting for him included state prime ministers who belonged to the then-ruling, left-wing parties like the Social Democrats and the Green party. Müller left the court in 2023. As the German media outlet, Legal Tribune Online, points out, the court's mixture of opinions is exactly why it is so respected. "The Karlsruhe court thrives on its pluralistic composition," the legal specialists wrote this week. "In their collective decision-making process, the 16 judges must argue and persuade … the court's working practices depend on this collaboration resulting in constitutionally sound decisions." The Federal Constitutional Court candidate at the center of the controversy, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, is not a politician. She is a highly respected constitutional law professor at the University of Potsdam. Brosius-Gersdorf has repeatedly dealt with difficult areas of jurisprudence, including abortion and how the Basic Law's ideals about human dignity apply to both mother and unborn child. Basically, when it comes to these tricky questions, she is doing her job, just as she is supposed to. However last Friday, her candidature for the Federal Constitutional Court appeared to fail. Germany's governing coalition — with the conservative CDU in the majority and the left-leaning Social Democrats a minority partner — withdrew the election of judges from parliamentary agenda. It had become clear that the CDU and their junior partner, the Christian Social Union, or CSU, were way too resistant to Brosius-Gersdorf. That was despite the fact that the parliamentary committee selecting the three candidates had previously expressed broad, cross-party support for Brosius-Gersdorf. For Philipp Sälhoff, head of Berlin-based political consultancy Polisphere the answer is clear. "Yes, there was a campaign," he told DW. His consultancy examined 40,000 related posts on the platform X (formerly Twitter). According to Sälhoff, all the elements one might expect to see in a targeted campaign were there. "Online petitions, calls to action, formulas for [protest] letters you can send to your member of parliament, paid-for advertising and posts, or the networking of actors on social media with one clear goal: preventing the election of this candidate," he explained. Reports in traditional media are not part of this, Sälhoff explains: "A critical political report isn't part of such a campaign, rather they're legitimate and necessary when it comes to how members of parliament vote, including on Federal Constitutional Court judges." The problem is that the campaign on social media was manipulative and became increasingly problematic as disinformation and aggressive exaggeration won over the facts, he noted. According to Polisphere's research, the agitating done by right-wing organizations like Nius were particularly notable. This online platform, founded by German billionaire Frank Gotthardt who had the intention of making it into this country's version of Fox News, was shooting at Brosius-Gersdorf from all barrels, and mostly with defamatory and false information. The law professor was described as a "left-wing radical," an extremist who would have allowed babies aborted at nine months and who was against freedom of opinion. These sort of untruths were peddled to an audience of millions and other far-right media followed suit. When it was announced that the vote on the Federal Constitutional Court judges had been called off, Nius' editor-in-chief, Julian Reichelt, celebrated. "This is a good day for us," he said. "Nobody recognized that there are now new media who won't play along with the [mainstream] political-media complex." In other words, he saw the campaign against Brosius-Gersdorf as a victory over established German media. Polisphere's Sälhoff sees reasons for concern in Reichelt's proclamation of victory. "It's not about whether these kinds of media impact opinions in Germany — they've been doing that for a while already," he explained. "But to engineer a situation like this in Germany's parliament in such a short time, where it was exposed more or less out of nowhere, and right in front of the eyes of the German and the international public — that's certainly success for them," Sälhoff said. Of course, at the same time members of parliament make decisions of their own accord. Campaigns, no matter what flavor, are part of the political scenery and they regularly drum up support, regardless of one's political persuasion. This is why CDU member and former Federal Constitutional Court judge, Peter Müller, believes the fault lies with his own party's leadership. "This is a blatant failure of leadership by the CDU/CSU," he said in an interview with German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "Something like this shouldn't happen." Apparently shortly before the scheduled election of the judges, CDU leader and current Chancellor Friedrich Merz and CDU parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn had signaled they expected party members to support Brosius-Gersdorf's candidacy. But apparently they were not listened to. For the time being, the vote for new Federal Constitutional Court judges has been taken off the parliament's agenda. Following that, in a long television interview with one of Germany's best known talk show hosts, Brosius-Gersdorf took on a lot of the accusations that had been made against her, saying she was neither radical nor extremist. She also tried to explain her position on various issues from a legal point of view. When asked whether she would continue to seek a spot on the bench, the 54-year-old replied that if there was any danger posed by her candidacy to the court itself, she would withdraw her nomination.
DW
a day ago
- Politics
- DW
Merz defends top court nominee from 'unacceptable' attack – DW – 07/18/2025
Germany's Friedrich Merz has weighed in on a dispute causing a rift within his ruling coalition. The conservative chancellor said much right-wing criticism of top court candidate Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf had been unfair. Conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday defended Constitutional Court nominee Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf against fierce criticism from the political right. A dispute over the nomination has deepened discord within Merz's coalition, with center-left Social Democrats accusing conservative figures of exploiting claims about the law professor to sabotage her nomination for ideological reasons. Brosius-Gersdorf's nomination to Germany's top court was put on hold after a dispute over media portrayals of claims about her having "ultra-left" views and unsubstantiated plagiarism allegations. Brosius-Gersdorf was proposed as a candidate by the center-left Social Democrats, the junior partner in government. Merz's conservatives unexpectedly withdrew their support, citing concerns about her views on abortion and her support for mandatory vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. A scheduled vote on her appointment to the Federal Constitutional Court was postponed. However, Merz called the media scrum around the law professor in recent weeks "completely unacceptable." "The criticism that was expressed was at times unobjective, polemical, and in part personally insulting and degrading," Merz said. He warned of a climate — particularly on social media — where "massive personal defamation" is no longer off-limits. The discord between the two parties represents the first major crisis within Germany's governing coalition, which only came to power in May. Brosius-Gersdorf said in a letter that the depiction of her character as "ultra-left" and "radical left" was "defamatory and unrealistic." She also accused the German media of "inaccurate and incomplete, unobjective and non-transparent" reporting. Brosius-Gersdorf has said the regularly raised claim that she supports legalizing abortion up until birth, among other depictions of her views, was both inaccurate and disparaging. "If you categorize my academic positions in their political breadth, a picture of the democratic center emerges," she argued. In an interview with the broadcaster ZDF, Brosius-Gersdorf said she would withdraw if her nomination appeared to damage the court's reputation. "I don't think anyone could have imagined it in their worst dreams, this kind of politicization of a constitutional court election," she said. "It's extremely dangerous, because it endangers the culture of debate, the foundations of our democracy." Brosius-Gersdorf remains a candidate for the court and could still be appointed after the Bundestag's summer break. Merz, from the conservative Christian Democrats, has declined to say whether the coalition would present a new candidate. He said he believed in a good solution within the coalition. "I trust that the two parliamentary groups in the Bundestag will do well," the chancellor said. At the same time, Merz admitted that the candidature should be better prepared next time, and that personnel proposals should be discussed earlier. But, he said, there was no time pressure and talks within the coalition were ongoing. German Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil, from the Social Democrats, has urged "leadership and responsibility" from his conservative coalition partners. However, Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Bavarian state premier leader Markus Söder, both from Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union, have both called on Brosius-Gersdorf to withdraw her candidacy. Germany's National Association of Local Gender Equality Officers warned against any such move, saying it would "send the wrong signal to enemies of democracy." The organization called the pressure on the academic part of a broader antifeminist and far-right campaign. The Karlsruhe-based Constitutional Court ensures compliance with the country's constitution, with judges elected to 12-year terms, with an age limit of 68 years. As one of Germany's most powerful institutions, it has regularly challenged both German and European politics.
DW
4 days ago
- Politics
- DW
US drone war: Berlin not absolved of all responsibility – DW – 07/15/2025
Germany's top court has decided that the US air base in Ramstein may be used for lethal drone strikes, but Germany also has a duty to protect. Does the "right to life and physical integrity" guaranteed in Article 2 of Germany's Basic Law also apply when people are killed far away from Germany by another state with at least indirect German assistance? The Federal Constitutional Court, the equivalent to the US Supreme Court, was tasked with answering this tricky question on Tuesday. The case was brought by two men whose relatives were killed in a targeted US drone strike in Yemen in 2012. The technical infrastructure of the US air base in Ramstein was also used in the strike. In this specific case, the lawsuit was dismissed as unfounded. However, the ruling is not a complete carte blanche for potentially lethal drone missions in the future. According to the court's official reasoning, Germany must also protect fundamental human rights and the core norms of international humanitarian law abroad. However, the court also granted the federal government considerable leeway to determine its foreign and security policy. The mandate now announced is subject to two conditions: A sufficient connection to German state authority and the serious risk that international law could be systematically violated. According to the Constitutional Court, this was not the case with the drone strikes in Yemen. The court ruled that the US took sufficient account of the protection of civilians in its fight against international terrorism, and referred to "legitimate military targets." However, innocent people were killed alongside the suspected terrorists in the attack controlled from Ramstein, which brought criticism from legal scholar Paulina Starski of the University of Freiburg on the TV channel : "If they don't know exactly who they are attacking, they have to assume that it is a civilian." That is why targeted killings carried out by state actors are often highly problematic from a humanitarian and international law perspective. If the US Air Force could guide its missiles remotely from US territory straight to their targets, it would not need logistical support from its Ramstein airbase. But direct radio links between the US and Yemen are not possible, due to the curvature of the Earth. This is why signals are redirected via Ramstein, which makes the base indispensable for attacks in the Middle East. And they are very simple: A drone pilot sits in Florida, connected to the Ramstein hub via fiberoptic cables, guiding the deadly weapon to its target. The lawyer representing the unsuccessful plaintiffs from Yemen, Andreas Schüller, called the Constitutional Court's decision painful and disappointing. But he added that the duty to protect now formulated also provides guidelines for future conflicts: "Following today's ruling, there may be situations in which violations of human rights and international law abroad are brought before German courts." The federal government reacted with relief. State Secretary Nils Schmid of the Ministry of Defense emphasized that compliance with international law was always a priority. At the same time, he said, the ruling gave German security policy "the necessary leeway" to be a reliable you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing.
Saudi Gazette
4 days ago
- Politics
- Saudi Gazette
German court rejects Yemeni plaintiffs' case over 2012 US drone strike deaths
BERLIN — Germany's highest court rejected a case on Tuesday brought by Yemeni plaintiffs who argued the German government failed in its duty to protect relatives who they say were killed in a 2012 drone strike that was carried out with help from a US military base in Germany. Ruling in a case that has been making its way through the German judicial system for over a decade, the Federal Constitutional Court found the German government can have a concrete duty to protect foreign citizens abroad in some cases. However, the court said that this could only apply when there is a "sufficient connection" to the German state's authority and "a serious danger of systematic violation" of international law. The judges found this case didn't fulfil those requirements. The plaintiffs argued the US military's Ramstein air base in southwestern Germany plays a key role in relaying flight control data used for armed drone strikes in Yemen via a satellite relay station set up with the knowledge and approval of the government in Berlin. The Higher Administrative Court in Münster ruled in 2019 that the German government had partial responsibility to ensure US drone strikes controlled with help from Ramstein are in line with international law, but judges stopped short of ordering the ban human rights activists had called following year, a federal court overturned the Supreme Court said the evidence submitted did not lead to the conclusion that the US applied criteria that were unacceptable under international law in determining legitimate military targets in European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, which argued the case for the Yemeni plaintiffs, said 'at a time when the adherence of state action to international law is increasingly being called into question, the court has failed to send a strong signal."'Individual legal protection remains a theoretical possibility without practical consequences," it summer 2012, two members of the bin Ali Jaber family were killed in a US drone strike targeting alleged members of Al-Qaeda in the Yemeni village of 2002, the US has used targeted drone attacks to kill those suspected of being involved in terrorism in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Libya. — Euronews
DW
4 days ago
- Politics
- DW
US drone war: Constitutional Court exonerates Germany – DW – 07/15/2025
Germany's top court has decided that the US air base in Ramstein may be used for lethal drone strikes, but Germany also has a duty to protect. Does the "right to life and physical integrity" guaranteed in Article 2 of Germany's Basic Law also apply when people are killed far away from Germany by another state with at least indirect German assistance? The Federal Constitutional Court, the equivalent to the US Supreme Court, was tasked with answering this tricky question on Tuesday. The case was brought by two men whose relatives were killed in a targeted US drone strike in Yemen in 2012. The technical infrastructure of the US air base in Ramstein was also used in the strike. In this specific case, the lawsuit was dismissed as unfounded. However, the ruling is not a complete carte blanche for potentially lethal drone missions in the future. According to the court's official reasoning, Germany must also protect fundamental human rights and the core norms of international humanitarian law abroad. However, the court also granted the federal government considerable leeway to determine its foreign and security policy. The mandate now announced is subject to two conditions: A sufficient connection to German state authority and the serious risk that international law could be systematically violated. According to the Constitutional Court, this was not the case with the drone strikes in Yemen. The court ruled that the US took sufficient account of the protection of civilians in its fight against international terrorism, and referred to "legitimate military targets." However, innocent people were killed alongside the suspected terrorists in the attack controlled from Ramstein, which brought criticism from legal scholar Paulina Starski of the University of Freiburg on the TV channel : "If they don't know exactly who they are attacking, they have to assume that it is a civilian." That is why targeted killings carried out by state actors are often highly problematic from a humanitarian and international law perspective. If the US Air Force could guide its missiles remotely from US territory straight to their targets, it would not need logistical support from its Ramstein airbase. But direct radio links between the US and Yemen are not possible, due to the curvature of the Earth. This is why signals are redirected via Ramstein, which makes the base indispensable for attacks in the Middle East. And they are very simple: A drone pilot sits in Florida, connected to the Ramstein hub via fiberoptic cables, guiding the deadly weapon to its target. The lawyer representing the unsuccessful plaintiffs from Yemen, Andreas Schüller, called the Constitutional Court's decision painful and disappointing. But he added that the duty to protect now formulated also provides guidelines for future conflicts: "Following today's ruling, there may be situations in which violations of human rights and international law abroad are brought before German courts." The federal government reacted with relief. State Secretary Nils Schmid of the Ministry of Defense emphasized that compliance with international law was always a priority. At the same time, he said, the ruling gave German security policy "the necessary leeway" to be a reliable you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing.
