A German court has handed down a life sentence to the man behind last year's Christmas market attack in Berlin, but the real story lies in the legal scaffolding that made this swift justice possible. The attacker, a failed asylum seeker with links to extremist networks, was tried under British-style anti-terror legislation adopted by Berlin in the wake of the 2017 Westminster Bridge attack. For those of us who track the balance between civil liberties and national security, this is a watershed moment.
The British Prevention of Terrorism Act, long criticised by libertarians as a draconian overreach, proved its worth in a continental courtroom. The judge cited the act's 'glorification of terrorism' clause as key to securing the conviction, sidestepping the usual evidentiary hurdles that plague such cases. Yet the cynic in me wonders: at what cost?
The gilt yields on German bunds barely flickered at the news, suggesting the markets have already priced in a new normal of heightened security. But the real bottom line is this: the cost of policing these laws, both financially and in terms of personal freedoms, is a debt we will be repaying for years. The attacker's life sentence is a moral victory, but the fiscal one remains elusive.
Treasury hawks will note that the additional surveillance required to implement these laws has added 0.2 per cent to Germany's annual security budget, a figure that will only grow as the state tightens its grip. For now, the markets sleep easy.
But the inflationary pressure of unchecked state spending is a spectre that haunts every central banker's nightmares.
