Press release 2006/015 - Tobias Pflüger (MEP) - Strasbourg, February 15, 2006,

The Federal Constitutional Court has toppled the air security law still entered by Red-Green. On that Tobias Pflüger, member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and coordinator of the Left fraction in the subcommittee Security and Defence of the European Parliament, declares:

The court decision to declare impermissible the shooting down of kidnapped passenger airplanes has to be welcomed. The Federal Basic Law prohibits military missions of the Federal Armed Forces within the borders of the country. Therefore, the Constitutional Court has responded to the constitutional complaint of the two “old liberals” Burkhard Hirsch and Gerhart Baum. A law that makes the killing of innocent civilians a military task is an attack at human dignity and at the basic right to life. The law introduced by Otto Schily put the Basic Law on its head; therefore, it is good that the Air Security Law has now been swept away by the Constitutional Court.
But attention! Now governmental representatives want to push through the plan by way of a change of the constitution. Until the soccer championship, they want to get the Federal Armed Forces employable inside the borders. Up to now, the Federal Army may be deployed within the national borders only in the case of natural catastrophes and major accidents.
The federal government should not continue to try to lift the constitutional restrictions on the Federal Army, also not in the case of sports events.
This abets a policy aimed at militarizing all sectors of public life.
Pflüger draws attention to the fact that a right to a military shooting down could also not be based on recourse to EU law. According to the order by the EU Council on the determination of common regulations for the security of civilian air transport, such missions are not envisaged.

Strasbourg, February 15, 2006
Translated by Carla Krüger, February 15, 2006