Interim suspension of call-by-call price announcement mandate due to missing transitional period

The Federal Constitutional Court granted the requested interim relief, ordering that the statutory provision mandating price announcements for call-by-call telephone calls not enter into force prior to August 1, 2012, while denying all other aspects of the application; the applicants prevailed in securing a moratorium on the disputed regulation. The dispute arose from a challenge to a federal telecommunications amendment adopted by the Bundestag in February 2012, which introduced immediate pricing obligations for specific telephone services without providing a transitional period for compliance. Relying on Section 32, Paragraph 5, Sentence 2 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act, the court issued this preliminary ruling to prevent imminent legal effects, deferring the entry into force of the specific norm to allow for a reasonable transition period, with the full grounds to be communicated separately to the parties.