Freedom of expression: Federal Constitutional Court upholds Julian Reichelt's grievance | EUROtoday

The Federal Constitutional Court has accepted a constitutional grievance from the journalist and former editor-in-chief of Bild-Zeitung, Julian Reichelt, granted. This includes an injunction towards Reichelt, which prohibited him from making polemical statements concerning the federal authorities's improvement help coverage. Reichelt had seen his basic rights violated by the order handed by the Berlin Court of Appeal. The judges in Karlsruhe agreed with him.

The topic of the authorized dispute was a put up by Reichelt on Platform X from August 2023. In it, Reichelt linked an article with the headline “Germany is paying development aid for Afghanistan again”. He commented on this with the assertion that Germany had paid “370 MILLION EURO (!!!) in development aid to the TALIBAN (!!!!!!) in the last two years.” “We live in a madhouse, an absolute, complete, total, historically unique madhouse. What kind of government is this?”

Die Federal Government took this assertion to courtroom. In November 2023, the Reichelt Court of Appeal banned this assertion from being publicly disseminated with regards to the precept of honor safety. This could be asserted if an announcement significantly impairs the functioning of a authorized entity, on this case the federal authorities. The Court of Appeal justified its resolution by saying that readers may get the impression that Germany had paid help on to the Taliban, which isn’t clear from the article linked by Reichelt.

“The contested decision violates the complainant's fundamental right to freedom of expression,” the Federal Constitutional Court now determined with regard to Reichelt's constitutional grievance. The state “does not have any protection of honor based on fundamental rights”; as an alternative, it “basically has to withstand sharp and polemical criticism.” The judges wrote of their assertion that the safety of state establishments mustn’t end in them being shielded from “public criticism”.

The linguistic context should even be taken under consideration when assessing an announcement. The Court of Appeal didn’t try this. It is obvious “from the perspective of an average reader” in view of the article linked by Reichelt that there’s a connection between his expression of opinion and the content material of the article. Since the Court of Appeal didn’t take the linked article under consideration in its resolution, the “constitutional requirements for the interpretation of controversial statements” weren’t met.

This article will proceed to be up to date.