(ANSA-AFP) - BERLIN, APR 29 - Germany's highest court ruled Thursday that the government's flagship climate protection plan was "insufficient", a major setback for Angela Merkel's right-left coalition in an election year when environmental issues are expected to take centre stage. Partially upholding a series of claims by environmentalists and young people, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled that Berlin's current goal of reducing CO2 emissions to 55 percent of 1990 levels by 2030 was "incompatible with fundamental rights". The current measures "violate the freedoms of the complainants, some of whom are still very young" because they "irreversibly offload major emission reduction burdens onto periods after 2030", the court ruled. It argued that while the state had not violated its duty to protect citizens against climate change, the government had nonetheless not set out the timeline for further emissions reductions in enough detail. Assessing that the risk of "serious burdens" being put on generations beyond 2030 as significant, the court called on Berlin to "at the very least determine the size of the annual emission amounts to be set for periods after 2030".

The government also appeared to welcome the ruling, with conservative Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier calling it an "epochal" decision for "climate protection and young peoples' rights", which would also give "planning security to business". Environment Minister Svenja Schulze also said the decision was an "exclamation mark for climate protection". Yet the decision in fact heaps further pressure on the government at a time when the environmentalist Green Party has taken a surprise lead in the polls ahead of September's general elections. (ANSA-AFP).