On EU issues, Parliament must be informed by the government as early as possible. This did not happen in an operation against people smugglers in 2015. The Greens and Left are filing lawsuits for violating the duty to provide information. Now the Federal Constitutional Court is making a judgment.
The federal government must inform the Bundestag comprehensively and at an early stage about measures of the common foreign and security policy as well as the defense policy of the European Union: When it did not do this in 2015 before a planned operation against people smugglers in the Mediterranean, it violated the participation rights of the parliament, declared the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. With his verdict, lawsuits were filed by the parliamentary groups of the Greens and the Left.
The procedure was about the Eunavfor Med mission, which has since ended, also known as "Operation Sophia". In the spring of 2015, the EU decided to take systematic military action against people smugglers and people smugglers in the Mediterranean. Bundeswehr ships also took part in the operation.
In Karlsruhe, the Greens and the Left complained that the Bundestag could not see the draft for the crisis management concept before the Council decision. According to the Basic Law, the Bundestag and Bundesrat are involved in EU affairs. The federal government must inform them comprehensively and at an early stage, but in this case it argued that these are not EU matters because the member states had reached an agreement among themselves.
The constitutional court has now ruled that the duty to provide information also applies to the common foreign, security and defense policy of the EU. All MEPs should be informed. Exceptions are only possible in certain cases, but they have to be justified.
Karlsruhe also agreed with the left-wing faction in another lawsuit. It was about a letter from the then Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to the then Chancellor Angela Merkel before a summit meeting between the EU and Turkey in 2015. In this case, too, the rights of parliament to participate were violated, the Federal Constitutional Court has now declared. The federal government had explained incomprehensibly that the letter did not fall under the obligation to inform.
