constitutional complaint against German mega truck trial

14 Dec 2011. The parliamentary factions of the Greens and the SPD will question the constitutional legality of the trials of mega trucks, planned for 2012 in Germany. It will be up to the constitutional court in Karlsruhe to provide judicial clarity if the highly controversial trials of longer heavy goods vehicles are legitimate. A legal assessment by the well-respected constitutional lawyer Ulrich Battis concluded already in September that trials with mega trucks without including the Federal Parliament and the Federal Council would be unconstitutional.

The Director of the Pro-Rail Alliance, Dirk Flege, called on the federal government to wait for the verdict from Karlsruhe and not to go ahead with the mega truck trials, which are scheduled to take place in seven federal states from early 2012. In November federal Minister of Transport Peter Ramsauer declared on a conference referring to a possible lawsuit: “Shall they go to court, but as long as they sue, we go ahead with the trials.”

The dangers of mega trucks are well known already. Oversized trucks are not just a danger to road safety, the longer vehicles are also a threat to rail freight transport, which is more environmentally friendly. Some sectors of the European rail freight transport market could be looking at losses of 38 in some sectors if LHVs were permitted, according to a study by Fraunhofer ISI, among others, which was commissioned by the European Railway Association CER. Also the citizens reject mega trucks. According to a poll carried out by the Forsa Institute, 77 percent of Germans are against allowing LHVs on German roads.

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