Wüst holds political discussions in Turkey and pays tribute to Gündoğan - Federal Constitutional Court celebrates 75 years

Wüst holds political talks in Ankara and awards a prize for tolerance and reconciliation between cultures to İlkay Gündoğan, the former captain of the German national soccer team, in Istanbul. In this way, Wüst can present himself not only as a bit of a foreign politician, but also as a great friend of the German Turks - a relevant group of voters for the Union for a long time and, in any case, for a politician who is thinking about his future.

Whoever has the final say has enormous power. For 75 years, the final decisions for the Federal Republic of Germany have been made in Karlsruhe. Today the leaders of the state are gathering for a ceremony to mark this anniversary.

In its 75 years of existence, the Federal Constitutional Court has banned two parties. It ensured that men no longer have the last word in a marriage, strengthened the fundamental right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and, in the wake of the SPIEGEL affair, placed the free press under special protection as an “essential element of the free state”.

Karlsruhe judges have decided whether and under what circumstances women are allowed to terminate a pregnancy, that crucifixes on the walls of Bavarian elementary school classrooms violate religious freedom, that the government is not allowed to set up its own television station and that it is not automatically an insult to quote Kurt Tucholsky with the sentence "soldiers are murderers." The Constitutional Court has enshrined our self-determination over our data, defined the possibilities and limits of European integration and ordered the government not to repeatedly postpone climate protection goals into the distant future.

And although the Federal Constitutional Court argues purely legally, its decisions sometimes have far-reaching political consequences: When the traffic light government was banned from reallocating funds in 2023 and then ran out of money, that was the beginning of the end for the coalition.

The population's trust in the Constitutional Court remains high, but levels have fallen in recent years. I wish you a good rest on your birthday. Because I fear that Karlsruhe will face some tough cases in the next few years. And possibly the third party ban.

More background here: The underestimated strengths of West Germany

As my colleagues Benjamin Bidder, Michael Brächer and Florian Diekmann show in their current report, deliveries of German goods to China are declining, but this decline is being more than made up for by other customers: "Exports to countries like Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have increased so much in recent years that demand from the East has become one of the most important pillars of the German economy."

I recommend reading my colleagues' text especially to older readers, who were among the overwhelming majority in 2004 who were opposed to the eastward expansion of the European Union. Today we can all be happy that they were wrong.

The whole story here: How Poland is saving the German economy