Constitutional challenge to the 1975 Act on the Protection of the Constitution: validity of structural amendments to the Constitutional Court’s powers under the Federal Constitution.

The Austrian Constitutional Court (VfGH) dismissed the complaint, leaving the challenged provision of the 1975 Act on the Protection of the Constitution (VfSchG) in force, thereby ruling against the complainant. The dispute concerned a constitutional challenge to specific procedural provisions of the Act, which had been introduced following the 1974 constitutional amendments to centralize and restructure the powers of the Constitutional Court. The court’s decision reaffirmed the validity of the statutory framework under the then-applicable constitutional order, determining that the legislative amendment did not violate fundamental constitutional principles or the separation of powers as understood in 1977. The decisive legal basis rested on the court’s authority to review the compatibility of federal legislation with the Federal Constitution (B-VG), specifically assessing whether the reformed structure of the VfSchG complied with the structural constitutional guarantees existing at the time of the judgment.