Yes, better protection of the supreme court is necessary. But this is not because of the current debate about the AfD.

Robes of the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe Photo: Fabian von Poser/imagebroker/imago

The Bundestag and the Bundesrat will probably decide this year on the rules intended to protect the Federal Constitutional Court. As a watchdog, it should not be able to simply shut down or become paralyzed. There will probably be changes to the constitution. The efforts should be welcomed.

However, it is a misunderstanding to link this debate too much with the AfD. The protection of the Federal Constitutional Court is not part of an anti-AfD package, along with the banning of parties and the loss of fundamental rights for Björn Höcke. In reality, the discussion is older. It arose when the governments of Hungary and Poland took power and eliminated the respective constitutional court as a control body. Since then the question has arisen whether it would be better in Germany to protect against such events. Is not the.

However, careful consideration should be given to how the Federal Constitutional Court can best be protected as a supervisory body. Because some well-intentioned rules can be counterproductive and hinder the court's work.

Currently, constitutional judges are elected by a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag or Bundesrat, which guarantees a pluralistic composition of the Constitutional Court. However, the two-thirds requirement is only regulated in a simple law. There is now a proposal to include this in the Basic Law in the future, so that the AfD, for example, if it had a majority in the Bundestag, could not simply change this rule.

However, the two-thirds requirement also means that the AfD can block the appointment of new judges as soon as it has more than a third of the mandates in the Bundestag. Therefore, it is also important to have a mechanism that allows these blockages to be resolved in an emergency, for example by forming a committee made up of judges from other federal courts, which can elect new constitutional judges in the event of a prolonged blockade in the Bundestag or Bundesrat.