Hanger warns: FPÖ committee demands violates the constitution!

Hanger warns: FPÖ committee demands violates the constitution!

Österreich - On July 8, 2025, ÖVP parliamentary group leader Andreas Hanger critically commented on the plans of the FPÖ to use a new committee of inquiry. Hanger recalled that well -known constitutional lawyers such as Heinz Mayer and Peter Bußjäger already expressed concerns about the constitutional conformity of the desire. The ÖVP has two university professors for public law, Dr. Christoph Bezemek and Dr. Mathis Fister, commissioned to create an expert opinion that comes to the conclusion that the FPÖ request is inadmissible, since two different processes are mixed.

hanger emphasized that the responsible regional committee would examine the desire and assured that the ÖVP would contest it. The FPÖ is called to make its request legally correctly and to treat the topics in separate investigation committees. If the FPÖ does not agree to this legal opinion, it can call the Constitutional Court.

on the function of investigation committees

Examination committees play a central role in the government's control in a parliamentary democracy and enable the parliament to check certain facts using sovereign means. The legal foundations for this result from Article 44 GG and are specified in the Investigation Committee Act (PUAG). The final report of a committee of inquiry has no legally sanctioning effect, whereby courts are not bound to the results.

people who are affected by the publication of such reports have a right to comment in accordance with Section 32 (1) PUAG. The committee is based on the request of at least a quarter of the members of the Bundestag and is party -capable, which means that it can assert its own rights.

legal conformity and challenges

The constitutionality of the establishment decision is crucial for the work of the committee. It includes both the formal and material constitutionality, whereby the subject of the investigation itself must be constitutional. If a committee has been deployed, it has the right to raise evidence, which results from Article 44 (1) GG, among other things.

committees of investigation often act under the challenge that their work is a political tension between education and opposition. Interestingly, in over 75% of cases, committees of investigation have been used at the request of opposition fractions since 1949, which underlines their main use as a tool against the majority of government.