Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF) is preparing a joint constitutional complaint to be brought before the German Constitutional Court against a newly passed law in the federal state of Bavaria. It is seeking support for the case through crowdfunding.

In the last couple of weeks, Germany has seen major protests against the Bavarian Police Task Act (often using the hashtag #noPAG) – but nevertheless, the law was passed by the Bavarian state parliament on 15 May and entered into force on 25 May.

GFF sees the law as a massive threat to civil liberties in Bavaria. Critics have seized especially on a definition shift in the CSU government's law from "imminent danger" to "looming danger" as the threshold for police intervention.

“Not only do the police get a whole new set of competences to restrict civil rights, but they can also act much earlier now. Previously, there were clear requirements as to when the police should be allowed to act, and police action could be tested by administrative courts. In the future, it can hardly be controlled if a given situation actually presented a 'looming danger,'" Ulf Buermeyer, chairman of Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, explained. "Now, the police is in fact almost free to intervene at their own discretion."

Consequently, loosening legal requirements to only a “looming danger” will be one of the main issues in GFF´s constitutional complaint. A group of lawyers and civil liberties groups is preparing a complaint and currently examining the law for other infringements of civil and human rights.

"There are several options to act in the courts against the law. For us it is important to act as thoroughly as possible. We need a brilliant complaint to be successful," Buermeyer said.

GFF and other critics fear that the law in Bavaria is only the beginning for a nationwide change in police legislation, since the newly elected minister of the interior, Horst Seehofer, was previously the Bavarian prime minister. He is also a prominent CSU party member – the party that drafted and pushed through the new law. Seehofer considers the new police powers in Bavaria as a blueprint for the rest of the country.

GFF prepared a synopsis (in German) that contains the four different versions of the Bavarian Police Act: the one before 1.8.2017, the one since 1.8.2017, and the draft of January 2018 and the proposed changes of CSU, which went into force on 25 May.