Federal Minister Research Articles

Ministererlaubnis für die Fusion Miba/Zollern: europäische Champions statt Wettbewerb?

In the current case concerning the ministerial approval for Miba and Zollern, the applicant companies used established and also new justifications in order to demonstrate the public advantages of the anti-competitive merger. The authors examine the economic theoretical foundation of their reasoning and conclude that the Federal Minister of Economics should follow the Monopolies Commission’s reasoning and deny the permission. Furthermore, the authors recommend a fundamental revision of the instrument in order to justify its existence.

Cosmopolitanizing Colonial Memories in Germany

Cosmopolitanizing Colonial Memories in Germany

The introduction of hospital networks in Belgium: The path from policy statements to the 2019 legislation

In April 2015, the Belgian Federal Minister for Social Affairs and Public Health launched an Action Plan to reform the hospital landscape. With the creation of “localregional clinical hospital networks” with their own governance structures, the plan follows the international trend towards hospital consolidation and collaboration. The major complicating factors in the Belgian context are (1) that policy instruments for the redesign of the hospital service delivery system are divided between the federal government and the federated authorities, which can result in an asymmetric hospital landscape with a potentially better distribution of clinical services in the Flanders hospital collaborations than in the other federated entities; and (2) the current regulations stipulate that only hospitals (and not networks) are entitled to hospital budgets. Although the reform is the most significant and drastic transformation of the Belgian hospital sector in the last three decades, networks mainly offer a framework in which hospitals can collaborate. More regulation and policy measures are needed to enhance collaboration and distribution of clinical services.

Canada’s Stance on Huawei CFO’s Arrest: How Highly Disputed Case Will Unfold?

The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of international telecom giant Huawei Technologies, have fired up political and diplomatic commotions around the world. Meng’s arrest in Vancouver based on several indictment charges accused by the US government against Meng particularly situated Canada in a precarious position of standing strong as an ally of the US, but also avoiding needless enragement of China. Because the US filed a formal extradition request to Canada, Canada’s federal Minister of Justice has to determine whether Meng’s extradition hearing will take place, by examining legal prongs under the US-Canada Extradition Treaty. The international communities will be watching closely of this contentious extradition case that will certainly have huge implications on diplomatic, economic and political relationships between the Western world and China.

Rechtsnatur und Spruchpraxis der Schiedsinstanz für Naturalrestitution

The Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution of Publicly Owned Property, created by the Joint Statement of the Governments of Austria and of the United States of America of 17 January 2001 (Washington Agreement) and formally established by the Austrian Federal Law on the Compensation Fund (Entschadigungsfondsgesetz), was an international body consisting of three members, two of them nominated by the contracting parties, with a chairman agreed upon by the two arbitrators. On the basis of individual claims filed by victims of the National Socialist era or by their heirs for the restitution of real estates seized by the Nazi regime and still in public ownership on 17 January 2001, the Panel had to consider supportive evidence and relevant findings of the Austrian Historical Commission and – as a result – make recommendations for restitution to the competent Austrian Federal Minister. However, previous relevant decisions of Austrian authorities or agreements of the parties themselves were not subject to revision, unless the Panel decided unanimously that those settlements constituted an extreme injustice. After having considered 2,307 claims in the period of seventeen years, the Arbitration Panel concluded its work at the end of August 2018.

Transition towards Energy Efficiency: Developing the Nigerian Building Energy Efficiency Code

In Nigeria, there is an estimated deficit of 17 million housing units. Power supply is insufficient, and the electricity supply for about 60 million Nigerians relies on private generators, causing noise, pollution, and high expenditures for mainly imported fuel. Altogether, current challenges clearly demonstrate the need for effective energy efficiency policies targeting also the building sector. The Nigerian Energy Support Program began in 2013, among others, with the objective being to support the Nigerian Government in developing the Nigerian Building Energy Efficiency Code. This paper presents two preparatory activities carried out in order to come up with suggestions for a legal framework well suited for the situation on the ground: the Case Study Building Analysis carried out in collaboration with a Nigerian developer and the Nigerian Building Energy Efficiency Guideline, elaborated together with stakeholders. The results of preparatory activities pointed out that the code must put emphasis on climate adaptive design and must define requirements and procedures in a clear and simple way to allow for effective enforcement. Only then can energy-efficient mass housing be feasible in Nigeria. The paper concludes with a description of the Nigerian Building Energy Efficiency Code (BEEC), officially approved and launched by the Federal Minister of Power, Works and Housing on 29 August 2017.

The Victorian College of Pharmacy: a case study of amalgamation failure and success in Australian higher education

Small specialist higher education institutions often face challenges when negotiating with larger partners. In 1988, John Dawkins, Australia’s federal Minister for Education, introduced sweeping reforms to create a Unified National System of higher education. Dawkins’ criteria for funding necessitated mergers for many smaller providers. The Victorian College of Pharmacy in Melbourne, Victoria, presents a case study of how one institution negotiated this policy and asserted its interests to achieve an optimal outcome. It rejected amalgamation with the University of Melbourne, reaching a superior arrangement with Monash University despite state and federal opposition. This article combines archival research from Melbourne and Monash Universities and the state government with interviews of key players. It examines the importance of institutional identity and how small institutions can navigate government policies of consolidation. It also focuses on the deleterious effects of inflexible government policy and how the College successfully overcame these challenges to complete its desired merger.

Canada’s ‘brain gain’

Harvard chemist Alan Aspuru-Guzik has spent nearly half his life—20 years—in the U.S. He is sad to leave but feels he must. “The political dialogue is broken,” says Aspuru-Guzik, who was born in the U.S. and raised in Mexico. “People are not talking to each other; they are shouting at each other. I don’t want my kids to grow up in that kind of country.” So when Canada came knocking with a Canada 150 Research Chair at the University of Toronto, he accepted: “It looked like Canada could be a good home,” he says. “It’s a very inclusive society and has a commitment to funding basic science.” Aspuru-Guzik is one of 25 international researchers to be granted funding through the Canada 150 Research Chairs Program, which was announced as part of the country’s 150th anniversary celebrations last year. Federal Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan called the program a “brain gain”

The German Ethics Code for Automated and Connected Driving

The ethics of autonomous cars and automated driving have been a subject of discussion in research for a number of years (cf. Lin 2015; Goodall in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2424:58–65, 2014; Goodall in IEEE Spectrum 53(6):28–58, 2016). As levels of automation progress, with partially automated driving already becoming standard in new cars from a number of manufacturers, the question of ethical and legal standards becomes virulent. For exam-ple, while automated and autonomous cars, being equipped with appropriate detection sensors, processors, and intelligent mapping material, have a chance of being much safer than human-driven cars in many regards, situations will arise in which accidents cannot be completely avoided. Such situations will have to be dealt with when programming the software of these vehicles. In several instances, internationally, regulations have been passed, based on legal considerations of road safety, mostly. However, to date, there have been few, if any, cases of a broader ethics code for autonomous or automated driving preceding actual regulation and being based on a broadly composed ethics committee of independent experts. In July 2016, the German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt, appointed a national ethics committee for automated and connected driving, which began its work in September 2016. In June 2017, this committee presented a code of ethics which was published in German (with annotations, BMVI 2017a) and in English (cf. BMVI 2017b). It consists of 20 ethical guidelines. Having been a member of this committee, I will present the main ethical topics of these guidelines and the discussions that lay behind them.

Centenary of the Birth of Academician Prof. Dr. Isak Tadzer, Founder of the Pathophysiology and Nuclear Medicine in Macedonia.

Academician Prof. Dr. Isak Tadzer was born a hundred years ago on December 24, 1916 in Sofia. He completed the primary and secondary education at the German College in Sofia. In 1935 he began his studies at the Medical Faculty in Vienna, which he had to stop because of the annexation of Austria to Germany in 1938. He returned to Bulgaria where he continued his studies and graduated from the Medical Faculty in Sofia in 1941. During the War, 1941-1944, he was forcedly mobilized and he worked as a doctor in several villages. He was twice interned in camps in Bulgaria. In 1944 he joined the National Liberation Army and the Partisan Groups of Yugoslavia. After the liberation in 1945 he started specialization in internal medicine at the famous clinic of Prof. Chilov in Sofia. In 1946 he applied to the call by the Yugoslav government to the doctors in Bulgaria to come in aid of temporary work in our country. On the advice of the current Federal Minister of Public Health Dr. Dimitar Nestorov, Dr. Tadzer came to Skopje and was assigned to work in the Country hospital. He started specialization in internal medicine at the famous professor Ignjatovski, he established a family and decided to stay in Skopje. In 1949 Prof. Tadzer ended his specialization and he was elected an Assistant at the Department of Internal Medicine. In 1951 he left the Internal Clinic and he was elected an Assistant, and in 1952 he was elected a Docent in the subject of Pathological Physiology. In 1959 he was elected, and in 1964 he was re-elected as an Associate Professor, and in 1967 he was elected a Professor of pathophysiology at the Medical Faculty in Skopje. In the period from 1952 to 1978 he was Head of the Department and Director of the Institute of Pathophysiology. He was elected a Corresponding Member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1969, and a Full Member in 1974. In the period from 1984 to 1988 he was a Secretary of the Department of Medicine and Biology of the Academy. Prof. Tadzer has published over 300 scientific papers in the field of clinical medicine and pathological physiology, of which about 200 in journals in English, French, German and Serbo-Croatian, as well as 15 books, which include him among the most prolific pathophysiologists on the territory of former Yugoslavia and beyond. In the period from 1950 to 1966 several times he was on a vocational training in similar institutions and centers in Europe, and in 1972 he was on a study stay at many nuclear and medical laboratories in the USA. In addition to his great research activities his contribution as a teacher was of substantial influence and importance to the faculty. He was one of the greatest lectures at the Medical Faculty, the Faculty of Stomatology and the Pharmaceutical Faculty. Prof. Tadzer co-authored in most of the textbooks on pathophysiology for students of medicine, stomatology and pharmacy. He was an extraordinary physician, one of the pillars of the Macedonian medicine, he possessed universal, encyclopedic knowledge and is one of the most renowned medical workers in the second half of the 20th century in Macedonia. In addition to the scientific, medical and educational work Prof. Tadzer has especially rich social activity. He was President of the Faculty Council in 1975-76, he was Vice Dean of the Medical Faculty in 1958-60, Dean of the Faculty from 1963 to 1965, Dean of the Pharmaceutical Faculty and Vice Rector of the University from 1965 to 1967. Especially it should be noted his long-lasting activity at the Macedonian Medical Association of more than 50 years. Also, significant is his creative work within the Editorial board of the journal "Macedonian Medical Review", where for more than 15 years he was Editor in Chief or member of the Editorial board. For his complete activity Prof. Tadzer has won numerous diplomas, plaques and awards, and among them the following are emphasized: National Award of October 11, Order of Labor of Second Degree, the Award of the City of Skopje - November 13, the Charter of Dr. Trifun Panovski and the Certificate of Acknowledgement awarded by the Macedonian Medical Association for the outstanding results in advancing the medical science, practice and development of the health care and the long-term contribution and promotion of the MMA.

Achieving self-sufficiency: training Australia's future medical workforce.

There is an oversupply of Australian junior doctors, but significant training bottlenecks are developing, and geographical maldistribution in rural and remote areas remains. Last year, the Federal Minister for Immigration rejected a Department of Health recommendation for the removal of 41 health roles from the Skilled Occupation List after concerns that rural and regional communities would be left without access to medical services in areas currently serviced by international medical graduates. In an effort to achieve workforce self-sufficiency, Australia must ensure access to high-quality vocational training places in rural and regional settings while managing immigration of overseas-trained health professionals.

Land Regime Choice in Close-Knit Communities: The Case of the First Nations Land Management Act

Land interests on Canadian First Nations reserves have long been governed by the rigid and paternalistic provisions of the federal Indian Act, which require the permission of the federal Minister of Indigenous Affairs for even relatively minor land transactions. Yet an increasing number of First Nations have taken advantage of the 1999 First Nations Land Management Act (FNLMA), which allows First Nations to adopt a custom land code that replaces most of the reserve land provisions of the Indian Act in their community. This paper seeks to examine how First Nation communities have chosen to exercise their powers under this Act to define and regulate land interests on reserve. Working from a database of 33 FNLMA land codes, the authors focus on three discrete issues on which the codes differ: 1) whether to require a vote of the community as a whole for the grant of a lease in community-held lands to a non-member; 2) whether to require the approval of the band council for the transfer of a leasehold interest to a non-member; and 3) whether to require the approval of the band council for the inter vivos transfer of a member-held interest to another member. Each of these issues relates to the contentious question of how freely alienable land interests in indigenous communities should be, a matter that occupies a kind of ideological fault line involving considerations of economic efficiency and individual autonomy, on the one hand, and community cohesion and traditional culture, on the other. The authors make a number of observations relating to the links between the characteristics of communities and their choice of land regime. First Nations with substantial non-indigenous populations living on reserve were more likely to adopt rules allowing free alienation of leasehold interests, as well as free alienation of member interests among members. In addition, First Nations that adopted liberal rules for the transfer of interests among members experienced larger increases in the proportion of their members living off-reserve in the years following the adoption of their code. This may indicate that liberal transfer rules among members help to facilitate exit from the community.

Appraisal of Recent Trends in Environmental Regulation of Industrial Pollution, Energy Sector and Air Quality Control in Nigeria: 2011-2015

Nigeria's formal environmental regime has developed significantly from humble beginnings. Having been initiated in the colonial period during which environmental issues were generally couched within public health regulation, and having developed in a rather ad hoc manner in the early days of independence during which heavy reliance was placed on the law of nuisance, Nigeria now has a relatively comprehensive environmental regime. This regime is administered by an array of institutions. This article reveals that Nigeria now has relatively comprehensive environmental legal and institutional regimes adequately empowered to ensure effective compliance, monitoring and enforcement of all relevant treaties, legislation and regulations for sustainable development and conservation of natural resources in Nigeria. The NESREA Act 2007 and Regulations 2009-14 were instruments of necessity having learnt lessons from the drawbacks of its predecessor agency between 1991-2007. This review aims at providing an overview of a comprehensive environmental legislation in most recent times for effective protection of the environment, management of biodiversity and promotion of sustainable development in Nigeria. It further seeks to provide an overview of the unprecedented development in Nigeria's environmental law by the coming into force of twenty-four environmental regulations made by the Federal Minister of Environment.

A tale of two Canadian cities: Comparing supervised consumption site (SCS) policy making in Toronto and Vancouver

The Canadian government recently sanctioned a supervised consumption site (SCS) that is currently in Vancouver, British Columbia. The government is open to sanctioning more sites across the country; however, by law the federal health minister must consider whether such facilities are supported by local governments representing the cities where the sites are proposed to be located. Until 2016, the government of Canada’s largest city, Toronto, did not support SCSs. Drawing on Lenton cannabis policy research, this study analyses government documents, policy papers, scientific reports, and newspaper articles and secondary literature to identify some of the significant barriers that minimised the likelihood that Toronto’s council would support SCSs between 2003 and 2016. The report compares conditions in Toronto to those of Vancouver where SCSs have enjoyed council support since 2001. This study find that three conditions play an important role in explaining why SCSs were supported in Vancouver 14 years before they were endorsed in Toronto: (1) Strong public support; (2) Favourable electoral conditions; and (3) Law enforcement support. Changes in Toronto surrounding these conditions help explain why its council endorsed SCSs in 2016. This study concludes that Lenton’s research holds utility as a socio-legal theory of municipal drug policy change.

دینی مدارس کا کردار، ڈاکٹر محمود احمد غازیؒ کے تصورات کی روشنی میں

Dr. Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi’s personality does not need any introduction; rather his publication and services to Islam are enough to introduce him. In addition to his numerous publications, like the world famous Muhadhraat, Dr. Ghazi served on a number of prominent positions including the Justice of Shariat Court, Member of Islamic Ideology Council, Faculty member and fellow at various international universities (including Qatar University), Member Advisory board of State Bank, and Federal Minister for Religious Affairs. In his diverse scholarly career, Dr. Ghazi providing illuminating guidance on a number of organizational, socio-cultural and theological issues faced by the Islamic ummah. One of the institutions where these three aspects synergize with each in order to serve one of the most eminent needs of our Ummah is the institution of Islamic seminaries or the deeni madaris. These seminaries have a pivotal role in the transformation and maintenance of culture and norms of our society. The Islamic knowledge and practices that we see flouring in our society is a glaring contribution of these institutions. Dr. Mehmood Ahmad Ghazi had a lifelong association with these institutions and he left no stone unturned for their betterment. As a renowned scholar, educationist and federal minister, he duly highlighted the importance of these seminaries in national and international forums. However, he was also a strong advocate of reforms in these institutes. He stressed the administrators of these seminaries to modify the curriculum by including modern and scientific subjects, to keep pace with the rapidly changing world. He was of the view that graduates of these institutes must be able to compete with university graduates in every sphere of life. In short, Dr. Ghazi’s ideas are thought provoking, inspiring, and attuned to the needs of the modern era. He gave new dimensions to various fields of Islamic scholarship and his personality serves as a beacon for the Muslim youth and their leadership.

The GSA and Canada

The GSA and Canada James Retallack (bio) Every year in late September or early October, usually on a Thursday morning, old friends and new colleagues exchange hugs, handshakes, nods, or knowing glances in boarding lounges of Canada’s bigger airports. Without saying a word they know they are bound on the same flight to the GSA’s annual meeting. The process is repeated the following Sunday, though with less concentration of minds and bodies: the weekend’s activities have been too disparate—or dissipating—for that. These nodal moments in time and space mean a great deal to those of us in Canada because the Great White North is so vast (and it must not be developed, as a federal minister once quipped, in a half-vast way). Without a geographically compact Ivy League or UC system, scholars at Canadian universities are dispersed even more widely than their American counterparts: many of them see each other only at the GSA. Like the rest of Canada’s population, they generally live within 200 miles of the 49th parallel, belying one-third of the country’s updated motto “From sea to sea to sea.” Yet even for those who must travel south from Edmonton or Nipissing or Sudbury, fleeting airport encounters remind us that we belong in the GSA and the GSA belongs in us. The GSA almost “belonged to Canada” in a literal way in the mid-1980s. Gerry Kleinfeld flew from Arizona to Edmonton to explore whether the annual meeting might be hosted by the University of Alberta. I had recently had my sanity questioned when I voluntarily moved from Stanford to Edmonton in 1985, but I hoped Gerry’s mission would succeed, and others hoped so too. Alas, no deal was struck, for reasons I never discovered, and GSA members did not have to be warned that snow can arrive in Alberta’s capital in late September. Instead, I was warmed by the glow of Gerry’s boundless energy for forty-eight hours. Canadian membership has hovered at between 4 and 5 percent of total GSA membership since at least the mid-1990s. It now numbers just shy of one hundred. Given the distances they travel to attend the annual meeting and the increasingly onerous airport security measures to which they must submit at least twice and perhaps four or six times, Canadian members are probably overrepresented on the program. (Two of my most pleasant journeys to the GSA were road trips from Toronto with faculty [End Page 685] colleagues and student colleagues, to Pittsburgh one year and to Louisville another, precisely to avoid airport delays and other indignities). Canadians are also overrepresented in terms of their close association with one of the GSA’s most important partners, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Like the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, the DAAD and its directors in New York have taken special pains to support German and European studies in Canada, albeit with shifting emphases and levels of support. For example, my own university has the DAAD–University of Toronto Joint Initiative in German and European Studies, which provides a home to the Hannah Arendt Visiting Chair for German and European Studies each year as it rotates among the departments of history, sociology, and political science. All the visiting chairs enjoy traveling to the GSA a month or two after they have landed in Toronto: the historians I have known often remark how different it is from the German Historikertag: more gemütlich (even too gemütlich for some of them). Often they strike up friendships and collaborations at the GSA that are realized the next spring when they host a workshop or conference in Toronto. For better or worse, those meetings help make Canada seem less distant, or at least differently exotic, than it might appear otherwise. Meanwhile the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University (Toronto) and the Université de Montréal helps ensure that Canadian, German, and Francophone perspectives on Europe and the rest of the world penetrate the GSA’s activities. As on so many US campuses, these initiatives have helped Canadian departments of Germanic languages and literatures adapt over the...

Application of Agree II Instrument for Appraisal of Postpartum Hemorrhage Clinical Practice Guidelines in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Introduction:Federal Minister of Health and Minister of Health and Social Welfare of the Republika Srpska as a Governmental health authorities in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Republika Srpska nominated/appointed health professionals as their representatives to a multidisciplinary Guidelines Adaptation Group (GAG). This group started with its work in September 2015. The main purpose of the guidelines development exercise is to develop guidelines with worldwide recognized methodology for clinical guidelines development and adaptation. At the end of this consultancy, GAG would have develop a clinical practice guideline on Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) through the adaptation method, starting from published international clinical guidelines and adapting it according to the country specific requirements.Methodology:During the process of identifying the best guideline for adaptation, the GAG had to pass several steps. One of the crucial steps was to identify the questions related to clinical practice and health policy for which answers are needed to be addressed by the guideline. These questions included relevant issues regarding the topic area such as diagnosis, prognosis, intervention, service delivery, and training. After that, six guidelines have been researched by the six members of the GAG to see if they answered the identified questions. Evaluating the methodological quality of the selected clinical guidelines was a second essential step before deciding which ones could best fit the needs and interests. AGREE II instrument has been chosen as methods for evaluating clinical guideline quality and appropriateness. Four appraisers conducted the assessment of each of the selected guidelines for PPH. All appraisers passed the training for the AGREE II instrument before conducting appraisals, as recommended by the AGREE collaboration. Each of the four guidelines was rated independently with the AGREE II tool by each appraiser.Results:The highest score was obtained by the WHO recommendations for postpartum hemorrhage guidelines and each of four assessors recommended it to be adapted and further implemented.Discussion:In spite of several serous attempts and two Agencies for quality improvement in BiH the whole process of guideline adaptation is still in the beginning and therefore the establishment of a strong connection with similar institutions and organizations from our region and the rest of the world is very important. Cooperation and collaboration across institutions and countries and key stakeholders have potential to significantly improve the validity and quality of the adapted guidelines and to positively influence implementation.

Nuclear Waste Burial in Canada? The Political Controversy over the Proposal to Construct a Deep Geologic Repository

Canada’s newly minted federal minister of the environment, Catherine McKenna, decided on February 18, 2016 to delay the federal government’s decision on a proposal to construct a permanent repository for nuclear waste beneath the Bruce nuclear site, little more than a kilometre from Lake Huron. Officially called a ‘deep geologic repository’, or DGR, the facility is the brainchild of Ontario Power Generation. While it would not store fuel rods from nuclear plants, it would take in all other types of low- and intermediate-level radioactive wastes including concrete, equipment and protective gear from the continued operation and planned refurbishment of all Ontario’s 20 nuclear power reactors. While most of the studies and consultations were done when the Conservative government was in power, Minister McKenna has now delayed the decision pending more information and will seek a further extension for the review from cabinet at a later date. A federal panel appointed by then minister of the environment, Peter Kent, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission gave its overall seal of approval to the controversial proposal in May 2015. The panel’s favourable view overcame a major regulatory hurdle in the construction of the DGR however since the panel released its decision after public hearings, political opposition to this plan has only grown and spread. Critics argue that low-level and intermediate-level waste from all Ontario’s nuclear reactors should not be stored so close to the source of 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water. The proposal’s scientific and technical merits and demerits are already well documented in various reports and hearings, but more controversy is expected now that the federal minister of the environment has announced another setback to the proposal. We can probably expect more political debate and long delays.

Renewing Democracy: The Rise of Green Politics in West Germany

The September 2013 Bundestag election, which reelected Angela Merkelas chancellor, was a clear defeat for the Green Party. Alliance 90/TheGreens (henceforth the Greens) fared far better than the Free DemocraticParty (FDP), which failed even to score the five percent of the vote requiredfor representation in parliament, but still fell from 10.7 percent to 8.4 percent,losing five of their sixty-eight seats in parliament. Since in March ofthat same year, surveys had shown their support at 17 percent, this disappointingresult forced Jürgen Trittin, the leader of the parliamentary delegationto step down.1 In many ways, this perceived electoral debacle markedthe end of an era. The former Federal Minister of the Envi ron ment, whohad originally joined the party in 1980, told reporters that “a new generation” would have to step forward and lead the party into the 2017campaign. This statement suggested not only that the Greens’ rebelliousfounding impulse was spent, but also that they had become part of theestablishment in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), now requiring areinvigoration of their own. Since the Greens were once expected to be littlemore than a short-lived byproduct of the social conflicts of the 1970s, acloser look at the party’s founding moment at the beginning of the 1980smight shed new light on its current predicament.

Blackening of Files for Hypo Committee of Inquiry illegal

Since the beginning of 2015, the newly inserted Art 138b para 1 subpara 4 B-VG stipulates that the Constitutional Court pronounces on divergences of opinion between a National Council’s committee of inquiry, 25% of its Members and legal entities concerning the obligation of the latter to provide information to the committee of inquiry. In the present judgment with regard to the Hypo committee of inquiry, the Court had to apply this new provision for the first time. In response to the committee’s request to submit files and documents in accordance with the object of investigation, the Federal Minister of Finance blackened text passages to a significant extent. He argued that a complete submission would not comply with the statutory confidentiality and secrecy provisions. Since the committee issued a so-called ‘decision of persistence’, the Finance Minister filed an application to the Court to settle this divergence of opinion promptly. The Court concluded that all legal entities required to provide information must submit the requested files and documents (covered by the object of investigation) without blackening regardless of statutory secrecy provisions. At the same time, the Constitutional Court made it clear that this obligation does not confer the committee unrestricted competence to publish the pieces of information obtained in such a way but itself has to weigh up the competing private and public interests.