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A confirmation vote for three judges in the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, was postponed after the conservatives withdrew support for an SPD candidate, law professor Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, over her views on abortion and her support for mandatory vaccination during the Covid-19 pandemic.
SPD lawmaker Sonja Eichwede insisted on Saturday that the party continues to back Brosius-Gersord, an “outstanding scientist” who she said was prepared to meet the leadership of the CDU/CSU to “clear up any doubts.”
The Karlsruhe-based Constitutional Court ensures compliance with the country’s de facto constitution, the Basic Law. Judges are elected to 12-year terms, with an age limit of 68 years old.
The public quarrel between the coalition partners came on the last day of business in the Bundestag before the recess, giving the parties an opportunity to cool hostilities over the summer – or for mistrust to fester.
“Everyone should calm down a bit and then we will discuss the next steps with the SPD in peace,” Steffen Bilger, a top CDU lawmaker, told dpa.
Thorsten Frei, the CDU head of Merz’s office, said he was “sure that the coalition’s parliamentary groups will find a viable solution over the summer.”
Merz, who has been in power since May, has often promised that his government would avoid the constant coalition squabbles that characterized the term in office of his predecessor, Olaf Scholz.
The new chancellor is yet to publicly comment on the dispute, but he is likely to discuss it during broadcaster ARD’s widely watched summer interview on Sunday.
Dobrindt: Court not damaged by spat
Opposition Green Party leader Franziska Brantner told reporters that trust in the highest court had been “negligently damaged.”
But Dobrindt said on Saturday he could not agree with the argument put forward by critics that “anything that does not lead straight to a certain result is automatically damaging to the Federal Constitutional Court.”
“I don’t see any damage to the Federal Constitutional Court at all,” he told the broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
The comments came after SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch on Friday accused the conservatives of “deliberately dismantling our highest German court and our democratic institutions.”
Dobrindt in contrast described it as a normal political process that is subject to many influences, and in which the originally intended goal does not necessarily correspond to the final result.
By dpa correspondents
