Police letter
The so-called police letter is a letter from the military governors of the West German occupation zones to the Parliamentary Council on April 14, 1949. It is considered to be the birth of the separation requirement between the police and the intelligence services .
description
The police letter concerned the powers of a federal police force to be set up, later the Federal Border Police (BGS) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which were responsible for monitoring the traffic of people and goods when crossing the federal borders, collecting and disseminating police information and statistics, and coordinating investigation of violations of federal law and compliance with international obligations regarding drug control, international travel, and treaties on the prosecution of crimes should be limited.
Federal police authorities should also not have the authority to issue directives over state police authorities .
Finally, the establishment of a system for collecting and dissemination of information on subversive was against the federal government allowed (federal government) directed activities of the later Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BFV), but must not have police powers. This provision is known as the separation of the police and intelligence services.
In the 1980s, this letter was interpreted in such a way that it was supposed to be a legal sentence superimposed on constitutional law. Theories on cooperation between the police and the constitutional protection authorities were formulated under the heading of the separation requirement. The fact is, however, that at the time the Basic Law was passed, the quality of the law was in dispute. However, at the latest after the Western Allies granted the Federal Republic's internal sovereignty following the enactment of the emergency constitution on May 30, 1968, this thesis is no longer plausible and unfounded. This is even more true after the achievement of full sovereignty with German unity on October 3, 1990.
The police letter with its stipulations is completely irrelevant for the German legislator today. The separation requirement has not, of course, been omitted. According to an obiter dictum of the Federal Constitutional Court , it can be derived from the constitution . The legislature is therefore still bound by the separation principle.
Imprint
The letter from the military governors is reproduced in:
- Bernadette Droste: Handbook of constitutional protection law . Boorberg, Stuttgart a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-415-03773-1 , pp. 660 f ., Appendix 1 .
- Ernst Rudolf Huber : Sources on Constitutional Law of Modern Times , Vol. II: German Constitutional Documents of the Present (1919–1951) , Tübingen 1951, p. 216 (German version).
- German Bundestag and Federal Archives (ed.): The Parliamentary Council 1948–1949. Files and protocols , vol. 8: The relations of the Parliamentary Council to the military governments (edited by Michael F. Feldkamp ), Boppard am Rhein 1995, p. 230 f. (German version) and p. 231 (English version).
literature
- Kay Nehm : The intelligence service separation requirement and the new security architecture , in: NJW 2004, pp. 3289 to 3295.
- Helmut Roewer : Separation of police and constitutional protection authorities , in Deutsches Verwaltungsblatt 1986, p. 205 ff.
- Helmut Roewer, Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of the secret services in the 20th century . Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 .
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Decision of the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court of January 28, 1998 with the file number 2 BvF 3/92, paragraph 88 or BVerfGE 97, 198 (217) . Internet projects Prof. Dr. Axel Tschentscher, LL.M., MA. January 28, 1998. Retrieved April 9, 2018.