On the occasion of an initiative by the Union to punish "road blockers and museum rioters" more severely, the legal committee of the Bundestag heard several experts on Wednesday.

In particular, the invited criminal lawyers spoke out against a tightening of the existing laws.

Marlene Grunert

Editor in Politics.

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The skeptics include the former presiding judge at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) Thomas Fischer, the criminal law professor Katrin Höffler and the police union.

The German Police Union in the German Association of Civil Servants, on the other hand, supports the application “fully”.

The victim support organization Weißer Ring mostly agrees with him.

In it, the CDU and CSU are pursuing the general legal policy goal of better protecting citizens “from willful blockades of public roads and ensuring that these blockades and the associated impairments in police, fire and rescue service operations are punished more severely and, above all, more quickly in the future will".

tougher penalties

Specifically, they propose expanding the scope of particularly severe coercion, which carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

So far, the penal code only contains two examples: forcing a pregnant woman to have an abortion and abusing a position as a public official.

The CDU and CSU now want to extend the increase in penalties to offenders "who block a public road and accept that the police, fire brigade and rescue services are prevented from performing their duties".

The same should apply to those who coerce “a large number of people”.

Fewer requirements

In the criminal offense of dangerous intervention in road traffic, the requirements are to be lowered, and the range of penalties is to be increased to up to five years.

Disabling persons providing assistance is also to be punished with a prison sentence of up to three years.

There are also suggestions to better protect works of art.

Thomas Fischer considers the concerns of the Union to be plausible.

However, the initiative is not suitable for realizing it.

He also warns in his statement: "Cause-related measures legislation should be avoided, especially in criminal law." The applicable law and practice provided sufficient means to properly punish the illegal acts described.

The former BGH judge makes it clear that the actions basically meet the criteria of coercion and damage to property that is harmful to the public.

Depending on the individual case, the facts of dangerous intervention in road traffic and resistance to law enforcement officers would also come into consideration.

The question of unlawfulness is more controversial among some lawyers - especially in the case of coercion, which requires a special examination here.

“Objectively arbitrary” reform?

Fischer calls the planned expansion of cases of particularly severe coercion “objectively arbitrary”.

In his eyes, the intended reform of the intervention in road traffic is "obviously geared towards a specific individual case".

In general, a “particular danger” from road blockades is also not evident.

If they existed, "all unintentionally caused traffic jams on roads would also have to be regarded as 'particularly dangerous'," says Fischer.

He also considers the increase in the penalty for the disability of helpers to be "excessive".

The Leipzig criminal lawyer Katrin Höffler also came to the conclusion in her statement that "tightening of the rules is neither dogmatically necessary nor justified in terms of crime prevention".

The temptation to satisfy a few calls in the population in the short term is "absolutely to be resisted".

The police union, which also sees no gaps in the law, warns of a curtailment of fundamental rights.

Nils Lund from the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office, on the other hand, believes that the expansion of severe coercion could be a tried and tested means.

But not all the tightening of penalties that the Union has in mind are necessary.

In its short and rather general vote, the German police union called for a "quick and clear answer from the rule of law".