Court orders early election in northern German state

Aug 30, 2010, 15:33 GMT

Schleswig, Germany - A court ordered Monday early elections in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein amid a row over the constitutionality of the state's election laws.

The current state parliament and government must dissolve by September 2012, instead of waiting till 2014, the state constitutional court in the city of Schleswig ruled.

The ruling was part of a finding that the distribution of legislative seats after a September 2009 election was illegal because the state's electoral law was unconstitutional.

The low-income, largely rural state on the Danish border is currently ruled by the same centre-right parties that hold power federally: Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Free Democrats. They have a joint majority of only one.

The opposition Greens and an ethnic Danish group, the SSW, had complained about a mathematical system to distribute seats, saying it did not fairly match the number of votes each party won state-wide.

However the seven judges rejected calls for the court to redistribute the seats, which would have ousted the coalition.

'The various electoral defects cannot be separated from one another and given remedies in isolation,' said presiding judge Bernhard Flor.

State premier Peter Harry Carstensen said in the capital Kiel he accepted the ruling and would redraft the electoral law as demanded by the court.

A defeat for the CDU in 2012 would add to Merkel's problems at national level. Her party lacks a majority in Germany's upper house of parliament which is appointed by the 16 states.