Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, who had been expected to take a position in Germany’s highest court has rescinded her candidacy after disagreements within the government coalition botched her election.
An academic who had been expected to join Germany’s top court said Thursday she was no longer seeking the nomination after a row over her candidacy shook the governing coalition.
Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf had been proposed for a seat on the 16-member Constitutional Court by the centre-left Social Democrats, the junior coalition partner, but faced strident opposition from within Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance.
Right-wing MPs accused the law professor of having voiced overly liberal positions on questions such as abortion and the Islamic headscarf, but she said that much of the criticism against her was “defamatory and detached from reality”.
Her confirmation was abruptly pulled from the parliamentary timetable last month when it became clear she lacked support within the CDU/CSU bloc of MPs.
The SPD vehemently defended her candidacy and the unseemly public spat over the issue has been one of the first big rows within Merz’s coalition, which took office in May.
On Thursday Brosius-Gersdorf said she was “no longer available as a candidate”.
“It was made clear to me by members of the CDU/CSU bloc in recent days and weeks — both publicly and privately — that my election was out of the question,” she added in a statement.
Brosius-Gersdorf said she wanted to “avoid the row within the coalition worsening and setting in motion a train of events with unforeseeable consequences for democracy”.
The aborted vote last month was also meant to approve two other candidates to the court, whose nominations have also since been on ice.
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Brosius-Gersdorf said that if she persisted in her candidacy, the whole process could unravel and that this “could endanger the other two candidates, whom I would like to protect”.
SPD general-secretary Tim Kluessendorf said that it was “a bad day for our political culture” and that “not everyone gave Brosius-Gersdorf the backing she deserved”, referring to the CDU/CSU.
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“It must alarm every democrat that an undoubtedly eminent lawyer and expert should feel compelled to take this step,” he told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
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