The climate decision of the Federal Constitutional Court is drawing ever wider circles: At the end of April, the Karlsruhe judges ruled for the first time that the state must safeguard the freedoms of future generations.

In doing so, they called on the legislature to formulate more ambitious goals for protecting the climate.

Since then, there has been a lively discussion about whether this idea can also be transferred to other areas, such as the pension system or national debt.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Heike Goebel

Responsible editor for economic policy, responsible for “The order of the economy”.

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Gregor Kirchhof, Director of the Institute for Business and Tax Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Augsburg, comes to a clear conclusion in a study for the Association of Family Entrepreneurs: Whether climate, debts or overburdened pension funds - the state could be held in many areas, to plan more proactively.

With the climate decision, the Federal Constitutional Court created a new fundamental right to sustainability and intergenerational equity, according to the study, which is available exclusively to the FAZ.

No financing of social benefits on credit

In his opinion, there are some “demographic tipping points” that have already been reached and that now require rapid action: “The majority of the social security systems in the Federal Republic of Germany can already be fully checked by the constitution,” he clarifies and basically accepts the result First of all: They are likely to prove to be no longer sustainable, not fair to the generations and therefore not constitutional. Because that is the highlight of Karlsruhe's fundamental decision: It targets encroachments on fundamental rights that have not yet occurred, but are as good as inevitable on the basis of the current legal situation. So that the younger generations can live out their freedom rights just as people do today,the state must therefore change course at key points such as climate protection, argue the constitutional judges.

"The legislature must not always impose more permanent burdens on young people", for example in the form of more and more pension benefits, guaranteed income and debts at all levels of the state, says association president Reinhold von Eben-Worlée. “Politicians of all stripes must learn not to continue squandering tomorrow's money today. It is not intergenerational, it is not fair and it is not lawful either. "

The President of the Federal Social Court, Rainer Schlegel, is also pushing for the climate decision to be used as a basis for shaping social security.

"The law must be designed in such a way that contributions and benefits are proportionately distributed among the current and future generations," he writes in the Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW).

From his point of view, there must therefore be no financing of social benefits such as pensions, Hartz IV or social assistance on credit.

They would have to be generated and financed today.

Loans are only acceptable for investments in social infrastructure or education, from which future generations will also benefit.