Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled against climate lawsuits filed by environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) targeting BMW and Mercedes-Benz, dismissing efforts to impose a court-mandated ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles from October 2030.
The decision upholds earlier rulings from regional and higher regional courts in Munich and Stuttgart, effectively closing this legal pathway for the claims in their current form.
As the highest civil court in Germany, the BGH’s ruling represents a decisive setback for DUH’s strategy of pursuing climate action through the judiciary. However, the organization has indicated it may escalate the matter further. DUH executive director Barbara Metz stated that the group will assess whether to bring the case before the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC).
While Volkswagen was not part of this specific lawsuit, it faced a comparable legal challenge from Greenpeace, which was dismissed in 2023 on similar grounds, namely that courts lack the authority to enforce emissions restrictions beyond the federally established 2035 phaseout timeline.
The legal action, originally filed in 2021, was based on a constitutional argument. DUH’s managing directors claimed that continued production of ICE vehicles by BMW and Mercedes-Benz would consume a disproportionate share of Germany’s remaining CO2 budget.
They argued this would limit future legislative flexibility, ultimately forcing more severe emissions restrictions later and infringing on their personal freedoms under Germany’s Basic Law.
This reasoning drew on the Federal Constitutional Court’s landmark 2021 climate ruling, which found that earlier versions of Germany’s Climate Protection Act unfairly shifted the burden of emissions reductions onto future generations. That precedent has since been central to several climate-related legal challenges. Nonetheless, the BGH found the argument unpersuasive in this context.
Presiding Judge Stephan Seiters stated that the plaintiffs’ general right to personal freedom was not directly violated by the actions of individual companies. The court emphasized that Germany’s remaining CO2 budget is a national framework, not one that can be attributed to or enforced against specific corporations through civil litigation.
Both BMW and Mercedes-Benz maintained throughout the proceedings that climate obligations for businesses should be defined by lawmakers rather than imposed by courts, a position the BGH ultimately endorsed.
The ruling establishes a clear boundary between state responsibility and corporate compliance in climate policy. While the 2021 Constitutional Court decision compelled the German government to strengthen its emissions targets, the BGH clarified that this obligation does not extend to forcing private companies beyond existing statutory requirements.
As long as automakers adhere to current European Union CO2 regulations, the court determined that no additional mandates can be imposed through civil claims.
This outcome reflects broader challenges facing climate litigation efforts across Europe. While courts have successfully compelled governments in countries like the Netherlands and Germany to accelerate emissions reductions, attempts to apply similar legal pressure to private corporations have proven significantly more difficult to sustain.
