Overview
- Bremen's State Constitutional Court granted the CDU's challenge, finding the 2023 and 2024 budget laws violated the state debt brake.
- Judges held the legislature failed to quantify how the cited crises impaired finances or to link specific, loan-funded measures to those emergencies.
- Spending for public transport and the Gesundheit Nord clinic network was cited as insufficiently shown to address crises rather than cover structural deficits.
- The court recognized the climate crisis as an extraordinary emergency that can justify borrowing outside the debt brake if rigorously documented.
- The decisions were unanimous, impose no clawback of already spent funds, and leave limited carryovers of non-emergency credit authorizations permissible.