Why the curfew is so important
The development of emergency exemptions
However, there is one little thing that country fathers overlook in their announcements: there is no legal basis for imposing exceptions such as curfews. Unlike in the almost-EU country of Turkey, which has been kept in a state of emergency for years by a self-proclaimed disaster master, there are only three states that allow arbitrary restrictions on citizens' fundamental rights: the case of defence, natural disasters and riots. Both administrative fines and penalties can only be imposed for violations if one of these three cases has occurred. The state of emergency, as it was inserted into the Basic Law in 1968 against fierce opposition, has not been declared - until now.
Correct, for certain measures a municipality can invoke the Infection Protection Act, which applies in peacetime, to impose restrictions, up to and including closure, on businesses operating in the hospitality industry to which it has granted licences, but it cannot suspend fundamental rights.
What applies to the individual who thinks he or she is in a country with a free democratic basic order?
We feel basically free, and we overlook the fact that we are permanently surrounded by rules and laws that determine our everyday life. There is a good reason for this: nothing that happens to us or that we encounter is not regulated by law. Freedom is actually something else, but that is the price of the peace in which we have lived for over two generations; what society can claim that? It has even peacefully achieved the accession of federal states that K. Adenauer had already written off.
But it is precisely this power of the people that is now to be destroyed once and for all.
So many years without anything happening - it could not go on like this. For four legislative periods, politicians across all parties have been preaching that something has to change. The opportunity of the emergence of a virus has been seized (one doesn't know exactly where the mop of hair is in a virus, but that doesn't matter now, it's all about the image) and the virtual state of war has been triggered.
The problem has already been named: the necessary state of the country that allows someone like Söder, Laschet, Kretschmann, Thomalla or Ludewig to suspend existing laws (freedom of assembly, right to demonstrate, human dignity) or to think up new 'rules' and insist on their observance, although the legal basis is lacking, does not exist.
Getting companies to close their doors in the name of health and then declaring people heroes who can carry on with their jobs as normal because they pick up rubbish, sit at the supermarket checkout and stock shelves is a brilliant move. You can ask a lot of people under the tenor of common sense, but a curfew is demonstrably not one of them. We are social creatures and do not become couch potatoes because of a sudden difference in individual politicians.
What to do in case of curfew?
You've been caught jogging or walking the dog? Don't worry; the Basic Law guarantees that you can lodge a constitutional complaint against a parking ticket for walking your dog without permission. Important: have the parking ticket writer show you the ID card, because sheriff's deputies are not allowed to issue them, only armed (have them show you their gun licence) and uniforms are authorised to do so.
Anyone who has been to the covenant will know: The principle of command and obedience only applies if the command is one, i.e. it must be justified, appropriate and executable. And this applies to both wartime and peacetime.
War, natural disaster or uprising?
The behaviour of some state governments suggests that they are under the delusion of a war scenario. The disaster case allows state governments to allow regional and state-wide restrictions - the defence case nationwide, then A. Merkel is appointed Field Marshal and Defence Minister A. Kramp-Karrenbauer to Field Marshal and dispose of the deployment of the Bundeswehr as well as other executive forces. However, none of these is the case. Therefore, the Basic Law is also to be amended so that an emergency government is appointed even in the case of a cold.
Finally, something is happening in politics, and all this while we sit at home weakened and annoyed by the young people who know that they have an immune system that is faster than laboratories at forming antibodies against a virus that mutated in Chinese pigs after 15 years. But old people don't go out anyway, because 75 years after the end of the Second World War they expect bombs or rules from the country's fathers to fall on their heads every day.