Top German court blocks populist party's challenge to election result

Yahoo

2 days ago

Germany's top court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the results of February's parliamentary elections.
The case was brought by the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which won 4.981% of the vote - falling just short of the 5% required to secure seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament.
The party filed a legal challenge to the results, arguing that its right to equal opportunity was denied over the failure to carry out a recount, and the BSW's placement on election ballots.
The Constitutional Court, based in the south-western city of Karlsruhe, ruled that the complaints were inadmissible.
"The applicant has not sufficiently substantiated the possibility of a violation of its right to equal opportunities," it said in a statement.
Just one year after emerging as a splinter group from The Left party, the BSW fell 9,529 votes short of reaching the 5% hurdle in February's election.
In its challenge, it claimed that up to 32,000 votes for the party were either not counted, or were incorrectly assigned.
A successful challenge could have had huge implications for German politics.
The new coalition government in Berlin - made up of Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats, the Bavaria-only Christian Social Union and the centre-left Social Democratic Party - would have lacked a majority in the Bundestag if the BSW had overcome the 5% hurdle.