PRESS RELEASE
Will German Constitutional Court's Limits Prove Fatal to the Lisbon Treaty?
July 7, 2009 (EIRNS)—On June 30, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (BVG) presented its ruling on four complaints filed against the Lisbon Treaty. The ruling turned out to be a slap in the face to the national parliament (Bundestag), whose approval of the Implementation Law to the Treaty by a 90% majority on April 24, 2008, was termed "unconstitutional" by the judges. An article by BüSo (Civil Rights Solidarity) party chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in which she reports that the Maastricht Treaty is finished, will appear in the next issue of EIR, and will be accompanied by an interview Iwith the attorney for the main challenger of the Lisbon Treaty at the German Constitutional Court, Prof. Dietrich Murswiek, who explains that it "is totally false" to say that the ruling handed down on June 30 is an endorsement of the Lisbon Treaty. The Court has de facto changed the content of the Treaty, according to Prof. Murswiek, who was counsel for CSU parlamentarian Peter Gauweiler. The ruling "is a limitation of the Treaty. Basically, the Constitutional Court gives the Treaty, in part, a different content."
The ruling found that the Bundestag had surrendered German sovereignty, when it should have passed legislation to protect and enhance the powers of the national parliament and, implicitly, of the government. Therefore, a new law will have to be enacted, that guarantees the rights of the Bundestag in EU decision-making, stating, in particular, that members of the Bundestag will have to vote on any changes to the Treaty or any expansion of EU powers. That law will then be included in a document, accompanying the German "yes" to the Treaty. Until that is done, the President of Germany is banned from signing it.
In a statement issued on July 3, Zepp-LaRouche welcomed the ruling, saying that the judges had "defended the Constitution and interrupted the dynamic under which the European Union has been progressively transformed into an imperial, as well as an economically self-contained bureaucracy, ever since the Maastricht Treaty [of 1992]." However, the ruling is flawed, because it declares that the new Treaty is compatible with the German Constitution, despite the fact that it would ensure the transformation of the Maastricht system into an entirely oligarchical regime."
The judges also omitted any mention of the fact that its earlier rulings in favor of the Maastricht system were based on arguments that have since been invalidated by the effects of the economic-financial collapse, as Zepp-LaRouche points out.
