German top court rules against BMW, MB 2030 ICE ban

Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has dismissed climate lawsuits brought by environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) against BMW and Mercedes-Benz, rejecting appeals that sought a court order prohibiting both automakers from selling new vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE) after October 2030. The cases had already failed at regional and higher regional courts in Munich and Stuttgart. 

The BGH’s ruling as the final civil instance closes the judicial route for the claims as filed, though DUH executive director Barbara Metz said the organisation would review whether to take the matter to the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). Volkswagen was not targeted by DUH, but faced highly similar legal action from Greenpeace. The latter hit a dead end in 2023, when it was ruled that courts had no authority to enforce ICE bans stricter than the federally-designated 2035 timeline.

The legal action, which began in 2021, was brought by DUH managing directors invoking their general right to personal freedom under Germany’s Basic Law. The plaintiffs argued that by consuming an excessive share of the remaining national CO2 budget, BMW and Mercedes-Benz were restricting the scope for future political action. This, in turn, would make radical emissions-cutting legislation inevitable further down the line, and thereby infringing on their own freedoms in the future. 

The argument was not without merit: it drew directly from the FCCt’s landmark 2021 climate ruling, which found that Germany’s Climate Protection Act as it stood at the time imposed an impermissible burden of emissions reduction on future generations. The FCC remains an option for continuing the legal action.

For now, the BGH’s sixth circuit was not convinced by the framing. Presiding Judge Stephan Seiters said the plaintiffs were not impaired in their general right to personal freedom by the companies’ conduct, noting that the residual CO2 budget framework applies nationally across Germany rather than to individual sectors or companies. Both automakers had argued throughout the proceedings that the appropriate forum for setting climate obligations on business was the legislature, not the judiciary, and the court took substantially the same view.

The ruling draws a distinct line between state and corporate climate obligations. The 2021 Federal Constitutional Court decision compelled the government to strengthen climate legislation; the BGH has now confirmed that decision cannot be extended via civil litigation to require private companies to go beyond what statute demands. BMW and Mercedes are compliant with current EU CO2 emission standards, and the court found that compliance with those standards—set by the legislature within the framework of the Paris Agreement—exhausts what can be demanded of them in court.

The case is one of several European efforts to pursue climate accountability through the judiciary rather than legislation, a strategy that has had mixed results. Courts in the Netherlands and Germany have previously ordered governments to accelerate emissions reductions, but extending that logic to corporate defendants has proved considerably harder.