“Today is a good day for constitutional order and democratic culture in our country,” Justice Minister Marco Buschmann told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday.
He added that democratic backsliding in Poland and Hungary, along with a debate on judicial reform in Israel, prove how courts should be protected against governments that are not prepared to accept their decisions.
The deal illustrates growing alarm among many Germans over the rise of the AfD, which has gained in popularity even as it has grown more radical. The party is currently polling in second place nationally; in many regions of former East Germany, where three state elections will be held in September, it is in the lead.
Germany’s neighbor, Poland, serves as a cautionary tale of how a takeover of the judiciary by far-right forces could look.
Poland’s previously all-powerful populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ruled the country for eight years till December 2023, put the domestic judicial system under ever-tighter political control by, for example, refusing to seat elected judges and instead appointing judges seen as closer to the government.
To prevent such a scenario, the German proposal — which negotiators hope the Bundestag can approve by the end of this year — aims to enshrine in the constitution term limits for judges, an age limit for judges, and a limit on the total number of judges.
