BERLIN — A highly emotional clash over the appointment of a judge to Germany’s top court has exposed widening fissures inside conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s young coalition government.
The spat, involving a questionable plagiarism allegation and a passionate debate on abortion, threatens to undermine Merz’s centrist coalition just two months after the chancellor took office.
“It is not a good day for democracy in our country,” Dirk Wiese, deputy leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party parliamentary group, said on Friday regarding the clash.
Merz’s conservative bloc refused to support Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a judge nominated by his coalition partners, the SPD, citing a fresh accusation that she plagiarized her doctoral dissertation in 1997. Left-wing politicians say the plagiarism accusation is spurious, and the real reason for conservative opposition to the judge is her relatively progressive stance on abortion.
A parliamentary vote on Brosius-Gersdorf’s appointment, planned for Friday, was postponed after conservatives asked the SPD to withdraw the judge from consideration. SPD politicians reacted with outrage.
“We are witnessing how a highly qualified candidate with an impeccable career and broad professional recognition is the victim of a smear campaign that is unfounded,” Wiese, the SPD lawmaker, said.
Six conservative politicians, speaking on condition of anonymity this week, told POLITICO they were among two or three dozen lawmakers that planned to oppose Brosius-Gersdorf because of her views on abortion. Leading figures in Merz’s conservative bloc attempted to convince these lawmakers to drop their opposition in recent days, but failed, according to the parliamentarians.
The conflict underscores not only emerging divides inside the coalition, but its relative fragility given the government’s weak parliamentary majority and the rise of radical parties. The popularity of far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the second-biggest party in Germany’s Bundestag, means Merz’s centrist coalition controls only 52 percent of parliamentary seats, making it particularly vulnerable to even small disputes and defections within the rank-and-file.
Because the appointment of constitutional court judges requires a two-thirds parliamentary majority in a secret ballot, it also means the coalition needs to rely on votes from the AfD or The Left, a far-left party popular among many young voters, to appoint new judges to the top court.
‘Plagiarism hunter’
While the parliament was set to vote on three judges today, it was the dispute over SPD nominee Brosius-Gersdorf that deeply divided the coalition. Abortion in Germany is technically illegal, but is tolerated within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy on the condition that women seek counseling. Brosius-Gersdorf had developed a legal framework for decriminalizing abortion, leading some conservatives to oppose her nomination.
Still, conservatives speaking publicly suggested the true reason is the plagiarism accusation.
“The election of a judge to the federal constitutional court should not be the subject of a heated political debate,” Steffen Bilger, a member of the conservatives’ parliamentary leadership, said Friday. “An essential prerequisite for calming such a situation is that the respective candidates for the office … are beyond any professional doubt. In our view, this is no longer completely the case.”
The plagiarism allegation, however, is also drawing intense scrutiny.
The allegation surfaced the night before the planned vote on Brosius-Gersdorf, appearing on the website of Stefan Weber, who is referred to in Germany as the “plagiarism hunter.” In the past, Weber made similar plagiarism accusations against prominent Green politicians Annalena Baerbock, the former foreign minister, and Robert Habeck, the former economy minister.
In this case, Weber admitted that he wasn’t exactly sure whether the plagiarism allegation involved the dissertation of judge, Brosius-Gersdorf, or that of her husband, who finished his dissertation the same year.
“We don’t know that yet,” Weber told German tabloid Bild. “That’s the sticking point. Both works were completed almost simultaneously in 1997.”
Asked why he published the allegation the night before the parliamentary vote on the judge, Weber replied: “Since Baerbock in 2021, we have always done this before elections when we scrutinize candidates. This is the first time that it is not a voter election, but a vote by politicians.”
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