V a t t e n f a l l - Sweden´s other face

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On June 1st, 1995, the Brandenburg Constitutional Court decides that the State Government's decree declaring the Jänschwalde Brown Coal Plan to be binding, is unconstitutional and therefore null and void. According to Article 98 of the State Constitution, the "dissolution" of a municipality against its express will requires a law specific for this purpose, and such a law did not exist. With this first major success at court, Horno effectively stalled plans to destroy the village by several years. Three years later. The second Plan was also declared to be unconstitutional by the Cons titutional Court. Six years later, there still exists no binding Plan for the Jänschwalde mine that has stood the test of scrutiny by the State Constitutional Court.
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Following the above Constitutional Court decision, in January 1997 the Brandenburg Landtag (Parliament) began the legislative process for the so-called "Horno Law", which laid down the dissolution of Horno and its incorporation in the municipality of Jänschwalde.
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Towards the end of this legislative process, it became known that the Standing Committee on the Environment, which was responsible for guiding the bill through parliament and making a recommendation to the Landtag, would in fact recommend rejection of the bill. One day before the final, decisive vote in the Committee, the leader of the social-democratic (SPD) group in the Landtag withdrew those SPD Committee Members, who would vote against the bill, and replaced them with yes-men – just for the decisive vote! The following day the Committee voted with six to four votes to recommend the Landtag to accept the bill.
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In June 1997, the Brandenburg Landtag enacts the "Horno Law". Horno is thus robbed of its municipal independence and incorporated against its will into the Jänschwalde municipality. Furthermore, the law lays down a site for "New Horno" just a couple of hundred metres from the Jänschwalde power plant, that becomes legally binding should the people of Horno not themselves decide on a new site.
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July 1997. The people of Horno boycott the state government's referendum on the choice of a new site. In its place, the village council carries out a number of anonymous referenda of village opinion, commencing early in July 1997. The outcome of the first referendum, which is announced to a closed village meeting, is the decision to continue to fight against resettlement, but to choose a back-up resettlement site in case all efforts to save the village fail, and, most importantly, to avoid having the wholly unacceptable Jänschwalde site being forced upon them. From a number of options, 60 per cent of the Horno people vote for a back-up site near the town of Forst, 18 km from Horno.
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In September 1997, the Democratic Socialist Party (PDS) in the Brandenburg Landtag – a clear majority of which had voted against enactment of the "Horno Law" – files formal suit with the Brandenburg Constitutional Court, maintaining that the law violated Article 25 of the State Constitution, which guarantees the rights of the Sorb/Wend minority.
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