The Building Energy Act (GEG) was supposed to be passed in the Bundestag on Friday, but nothing will come of it: The Federal Constitutional Court stopped it in an urgent procedure. The highest court in the republic announced on Wednesday that the second and third readings could not be carried out in the current week of the session.
The CDU member of the Bundestag Thomas Heilmann had applied for a temporary order. This should prohibit the Bundestag from the final deliberation and vote on the law if the bill has not been submitted to the deputies in writing at least 14 days in advance.
Heilmann had argued that his rights as a member of parliament had been seriously violated by the legislative process. “The traffic light is ruining the heat transition with a last-minute legislative package and an unconstitutional procedure,” he accused the coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP. Due to the shortened deliberations on the amendment to the Building Energy Act (GEG) in Parliament, no conceptual weaknesses in the legislative package could be identified and changed.
The court now declared that Heilmann’s main application in the organ dispute proceedings does not appear to be inadmissible from the outset or obviously unfounded in view of his right to equal participation in parliamentary decision-making under Article 38 of the Basic Law. The assessment of the consequences led to the result “that the reasons for issuing a temporary injunction prevail”. The interest in avoiding an irreversible violation of participation rights outweighs the intervention in the procedural autonomy of the Bundestag, which merely delays the legislative process.
For weeks, the traffic light partners had been arguing about the heating law from Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD). The FDP in particular had concerns.
First, the cabinet passed the bill. But even before the first reading in the Bundestag, the traffic light agreed on further changes, which they set down in partly vaguely formulated “guard rails” – a very unusual procedure that led to an initial expert hearing on the original draft law, which was already outdated at the time.
The coalition factions submitted amendments to the original draft law to the Bundestag on Friday. The heating law should be passed in the Bundestag on Friday – before the parliamentary summer recess, which begins after July 7th. The hearing in the Bundestag’s climate and energy committee on Monday marked the start of the final deliberations. The committee draws up a recommendation for the plenum.
