Dr. Stephan Sina, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Legal, has published an article on the Federal Climate Protection Act in the first edition of this year's Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht (NVwZ). The contribution is a joint effort by several authors, two of them officials at the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Protection and Nuclear Safety (BMU) who have worked on the Climate Protection Act. The article presents the main elements of the new law and discusses its legal and practical impact. It can be obtained via the website of the NVwZ.

The Federal Climate Protection Act was promulgated in December 2019. It has a special status within the Climate Package of the Federal Government. Being a framework law for the climate policy, it sets binding greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and annual budgets for individual sectors. It also provides means and procedures to achieve these targets: regular climate protection programmes, reports, measures if targets are missed, the involvement of an independent Expert Council for Climate Issues, and the obligation for the State to act as a role model. This binding framework enables a better steering of German climate policy, and thus raises the prospects that Germany achieves its national targets and those set for Germany by the EU by 2030 and beyond. According to the authors, the Federal Climate Protection Act represents a milestone in German climate change policy, even if some provisions have lagged behind the possible level of ambition.

Stephan Sina is working on climate change laws at the federal and state level since 2009. Along with Friedhelm Keimeyer from Öko-Institut und Prof. Dr. Stefan Klinski from the Berlin School of Economics and Law, he has supported the BMU with preparatory work for the Federal Climate Protection Act.