20260201 Grundsatzurteil für den Klimaschutz

Landmark ruling for climate protection

This week saw the celebration of an interim victory in a legal thriller. The Federal Administrative Court ruled that Deutsche Umwelthilfe (German Environmental Aid) has the right to take legal action on the issue of climate law and that the content of the climate law constitutes a law. Logical, right?

What was the climate lawsuit about?

The government fought with all its might to avoid being ordered to do more for climate protection. First, the defendant, i.e., the government, questioned whether the climate protection law was even a program that the DUH, as an environmental association, was entitled to challenge in court. The federal government does not plan to submit a draft of the 2026 climate protection program, which is to be adopted in March, to environmental associations for comment.

The discussion then turned to the government's unrealistic calculations and the identified gap of 200 million tons of CO2 by 2030. In response to the accusation of "methodological errors" in the climate protection plan, which were also acknowledged, a government representative explained that there had simply been a lack of financial resources for some measures. Our comment: However, the at least 35 billion that the German government gave to Ukraine was apparently readily available...

The Nutella principle

As in the previous instance, the presiding judge emphasized that the Nutella principle also applies to the national climate protection program: what it says on the label must also be inside. This applies not only to Nutella, but especially to climate protection. It is not enough to simply create a climate protection program and then admit that it is unfortunately not sufficient to meet the reduction targets of the law.

The ruling

The DUH writes: "The DUH has the right to take legal action, and the federal government must implement a climate protection program that meets the 2030 reduction target. A victory across the board. And best of all, we now have a legal title to enforce this ruling against the Merz government as well. ...

We will closely examine all future climate protection programs and use our climate lawsuits to ensure that climate protection programs comply with the law so that climate targets are actually achieved. In the transport sector in particular, but also in the building sector, we finally need effective measures such as speed limits on highways and federal roads, the consistent reduction of climate-damaging subsidies, and a genuine strengthening of rail, bus, and bicycle traffic."