The Federal Constitutional Court has decided as follows: The legislation accompanying the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty abrogates the Bundestags’s rights of decision and is therefore unconstitutional.

“DIE LINKE” MEPs Tobias Pflüger und Sabine Lösing explicitly welcomed this part of the judgement.

The judgement says:
“The application made in the Organstreit[1] proceedings is admissible to the extent that the applicant asserts a violation of the competences of the German Bundestag to decide on the deployment of the German armed forces.” And:
“A similarly determined limit is drawn by the Basic Law as regards decisions re: the deployment of the German Bundeswehr. With the exception of the defence of the state, the deployment of the Bundeswehr abroad is only permitted in systems of mutual collective security, with the specific deployment mandatorily depending on the approval of the German Bundestag. The Bundeswehr is a “parliamentary army” on whose deployment the representative body of the people must decide.”

The High Court has clarified, therefore, that exclusively the German Bundestag may and must decide on deployment of the Bundeswehr. The Bundestag’s involvement in military deployment, as foreseen in the Lisbon Treaty and in accompanying laws, is, therefore, unconstitutional, according to the judgement of the Federal Constitutional Court.

This relates for instance to Protocol 10 of the Lisbon Treaty “on permanent structured cooperation established by Article 42 of the Treaty on European Union” which shall allow for military deployment within 5 to 30 days. Here – according to the judgement of the Federal Constitutional Court – only the Bundestag may decide, not the European Council on its own.

Tobias Pflüger said: “The Lisbon Treaty creates extensive new military competencies for the EU. The Federal Constitutional Court has confirmed this fact in its judgement. By ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, the German Bundestag has disempowered itself. This has now been corrected by the Federal Constitutional Court .”

The newly elected “DIE LINKE” member Sabine Lösing added: “The majority of the Bundestag has disgraced itself: Representatives of CDU, CSU, FDP, SPD and Greens, with the Lisbon Treaty, have themselves reduced their own rights of decision in such crucial points as the deployment of German soldiers abroad.”

[1] In German law "Organstreit" means a constitutional lawsuit on rights and duties of high constitutional bodies.