Ustawa zasadnicza Republiki Federalnej Niemiec a ochrona środowiska

Abstract

Environment protection became a very important factor in the social, economic and political life in the '70s the German Federal Republic. In 1971 it was introduced by the coalition of SPD/FDP into the government works as „Environment Programme of the Federal Government". The programme grants a special role to legal instruments, including institutions of constitutional law. The problems of environment protection assume in the constitutional law a form of a civil right or activities in this field are defined as tasks of the state. In the early part of the '70s proposals on constitutional regulation of environment protection assumed, as a rule ,a form of a civil right to environment (the above mentioned government programme), in the latter part of the '70s - a duty of the state. An extended theory of civil rights in the FRG affords possibilities to set up a norm joining those two functions, i.e. to establish a privileged legal position in the ecological sphere for the individual and, at the same time, to impose an obligation to protect environment on the state. Constitufonal problems of environment protection also occur in connection with the division of legislation between the Federation and federal states, similar division in the field of administration and in the sphere of relations of the government and parliament. However, the problem stays open as no norm of the Constitution of 23 May 1949 clearly defines constitutional environment protection.