Immigration Bill Goes To Constitutional Court

Six conservative-led state governments on Tuesday submitted a petition to Germany’s Constitutional Court to overturn a new controversial immigration law which was passed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrat-Alliance 90/The Greens coalition government earlier this year.

Led by the Christian Democratic premier of Thuringia, Bernhard Vogel, the conservative leaders of the states of Hesse, Bavaria, Saarland, Saxony and Baden Württemberg signed on to the suit. They are seeking to overturn the recently ratified law, which they allege was passed illegally.

In March, the debate over the passage of Germany’s immigration bill turned into a dispute over procedural irregularities in the Bundesrat. Two representatives from the state of Brandenburg cast two conflicting votes instead of the one unified vote constitutionally allowed per state.

The Social Democratic president of the Bundesrat, Governing Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit, resolved the conflict by counting it as a "yes" vote. Roland Koch, the premier of the state of Hesse and Christian Democratic Union leader, criticized the decision, calling it a "calculated break of the rules of our constitution".

Legislative procedure

The main question for the court will be to decide whether or not Brandenburg’s conflicting "yes-no" was correctly interpreted as a unanimous vote, as is required under Article 51 of the German Constitution, which regulates the voting procedures of the Bundesrat.

If this is not the case, and the court rules that the Bundesrat president illegally imposed a single "yes" vote where a difference of opinion was obvious, then the bill will no longer have the required 35 votes for passage.

But Germany President Johannes Rau, who is obliged to review the constitutionality of both contents and legislative procedure of every bill before he can approve it said in June, after signing the bill, that he could not find an "unequivocal and clear" breach of the constitution, neither in its contents, nor in its passage.

However, because the Christian Democrats were threatening legal action, he did say at the signing ceremony that he believed "it would be desirable for the Federal Constitutional Court to clarify this issue, so that the Bundesrat and the federal states have legal certainty".

The disputed bill

If the high court determines the the voting process in the Bundesrat and the ensuing approval by President Rau were in violation of constitutional procedures, the law will be nullified.

The conservatives condemmed the new immigration bill right from the beginning, saying a law which allowed a limited number of skilled workers into Germany was, "with 4.3 million jobless, completely the wrong point."

The bill lays out numerous measures to make foreigners fit better into German society, ranging from language to citizenship courses.

Its main ambition, however, is to enable employers in Germany to fill an estimated 1.5 million domestic skills shortage.

The government argues that there would be serious consequences for the economy if foreign skilled workers were not brought in.

But conservative chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber has said "we can’t afford to expand immigration, when in terms of integration, we can’t cope with the existing immigration".