Scent of Freedom

How threatened are our civil liberties? A commentary by Ludwig Bayer.

Karl Valentin sensed that every thing has three sides: a good one, a miserable one, and a comical one. The will to freedom is among the finest human qualities. Especially when a champion of civil liberty was the highest-ranking judge: until 2010, Hans-Jürgen Papier headed the German Federal Constitutional Court. Today, he criticises that grey side of the Corona crisis which he, as a non-physician, understands best. He sees civil liberties under threat. Every sentence he speaks can cut like a scalpel. (A metaphorical reference to medicine.)

Protecting health is indeed a task of the state, says Papier, but this by no means justifies every interference with freedom. It is not the relaxations that require justification, but the restrictions on fundamental rights: “We must be clear that the meaning and purpose of a constitutional state is, first and foremost, the protection of freedom”. We should not have to renounce freedoms for a single day longer than necessary. And: “I note with regret how little the idea of parliamentary democracy currently plays a role at all”. Power lies so heavily in the hands of the executive and its armies of officials that freely elected parliaments are being pushed, bit by bit, into the role of extras at the edge of the stage.

The people’s representatives must uphold their rights. Every planned regulation belongs in parliament: it must be examined whether it is truly beyond doubt that it is irrefutably necessary. The best way to combat a pandemic does not lie in regulations that are sometimes comically contradictory. Rather, the correct approach would be to procure vaccines by all available means on the world market and through domestic production. A vaccination rate of 70 per cent can then be achieved rapidly. As soon as Austria reaches this immunisation target, the hour of the legislature strikes. All members of parliament should quickly read the constitution once more and lift all restrictions within a single day – so that what their voters want succeeds: Freedom.