“Power imbalance vis-à-vis citizens”: Criminal lawyer rejects the offense of insulting politicians
According to Section 188 of the Criminal Code, insults against politicians are punished more severely. Ethics Council member Frauke Rostalski sees this as a contradiction.
Criminal law professor Frauke Rostalski considers the offense of "insulting politicians" to be inappropriate. "I consider it misguided; the harm outweighs the benefits," she told this newspaper. Rostalski holds the chair for criminal law, criminal procedural law, legal philosophy, and comparative law at the University of Cologne and has been a member of the German Ethics Council since 2020.
The entire interview appeared in the weekend edition of the Berliner Zeitung – you can read it online here.
Even without Section 188 of the Criminal Code, "other offenses for insult would still exist, which of course also apply to politicians," Rostalski said. The offense was tightened in 2021. Since then, a suspected insult can be prosecuted independently of a criminal complaint. The maximum penalty is three years in prison. For an ordinary insult, the maximum is two years.
"The problem is that an increased penalty is tied to the fact that the person being insulted could be impaired in their work. That they could suffer damage in the political arena," said the criminal law professor. "For me, this contradicts the fact that federal politicians can communicate via the media at any time. Ordinary citizens cannot." Furthermore, they could participate in laws that restrict freedoms.
"This is a power imbalance vis-à-vis the citizen. They only have their voice," Rostalski said. "And the occasional use of strong language in discussions is unpleasant, but human. The Federal Constitutional Court also says that politicians must generally tolerate more." Following a veritable flood of complaints, criticism of the law , which also includes defamation, has been repeatedly voiced in recent months. Most recently, a journalist was given a suspended sentence for distributing a photomontage depicting Nancy Faeser and a sign reading "I hate freedom of speech."
Berliner-zeitung
