Climate Change Litigation Cases against German Car Manufacturers Dismissed

On March 23, 2026, the German Federal Court of Justice ("BGH") ruled that private individuals cannot compel car manufacturers to cease placing passenger cars with combustion engines on the market before the expiry of the deadlines set by the EU Passenger Car Emissions Regulation.

Referring to the so-called climate decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court ("BVerfG"), the plaintiffs argued that only a certain CO₂ budget may be consumed by the defendants in order to achieve the climate targets set out in the Paris Climate Agreement. The plaintiffs asserted that by consuming too large a part of the remaining CO₂ budget, the defendants unlawfully interfered with the intertemporal dimension of the plaintiffs' general right of personality.  Plaintiffs argued that, as a result of this depletion, far-reaching measures for CO₂ reduction, thereby restricting their civil liberties, would be necessary at a later date. 

The BGH rejected these arguments. In particular, it held that the plaintiffs are not impaired in their general right of personality by the defendants' economic activities. Such an impairment is also not triggered in advance by the fact that the CO₂ emissions attributable to the defendants would inevitably lead to restrictive climate legislation and associated restrictions on freedom in the future. According to the BGH, such a legally mediated inevitability would require the specification of a certain residual CO₂ budget for the defendants. Neither the Paris Climate Agreement nor existing legislation provide a basis for such budgets for the defendants, the BGH continued. The BGH therefore saw a difference between the plaintiffs' claim and the constellation decided by the BVerfG.

A number of climate change litigation cases have recently emerged in Germany. A German farmer's climate change litigation case against a third German car manufacturer is pending in front of the Higher Regional Court in Hamm that recently held that a German energy company could at least in principle be liable for costs for protecting a Peruvian farmer's property endangered by the possible overflow of a glacial lake in the Andes.