The retired president of a German state court has accused chancellor Merkel of acting unconstitutionally, and of moving to build her own personal power at the expense of German democracy.

Judge Michael Bertrams, former president of the constitutional court of North Rhine-Westphalia said Chancellor Merkel had “gone it alone” over the admission of “hundreds of thousands of refugees into the country”. Judge Bertrams may have seen the worst excesses of this policy, as his court sat in the same German state which was rocked this month by the new year’s migrant rape crisis, which was first reported in its largest city Cologne.

Chancellor Merkel’s approach to migration is so far removed from the will of people people there are now questions over whether her actions are legitimate, questions the judge in an interview with Die Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.

German daily Die Welt reports the judge has referred to Mrs. Merkel as creating a “high-handed Chancellor-democracy”, an obvious reference to the power-grabbing German Chancellor of 1933, Adolf Hitler.

Judge Bertrams wrote: “Quite apart from the actions of the Chancellor, it raises the constitutional issue of whether she was legitimately able to act alone at all. In our representative democracy all essential decisions – especially those with impact on the budget – are in the hands of elected MPs”. The Judge wrote in his opinion is the Bundestag (German parliament) needed to be consulted on the deployment of a couple of hundred German troops to Mali for peacekeeping, “then it is certainly necessary whenit comes to receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees”.

The Chancellor’s decisions, he contends, are not only without democratic merit at home but are also unpopular with Germany’s European allies, a fact that is “especially true after the events of Cologne”.

“European community values” ends where taking in millions of refugees begins said Judge Bertrams, citing the cases of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

The migrant policy was being responsible for inadvertently destroying the European project, with right wing governments emerging, and Britain’s referendum to leave the Union becoming more likely to succeed because of Chancellor Merkel, he wrote.

Judge Bertrams is not the first senior German constitutional judge to speak out against the unilateralist behaviour of Chancellor Merkel in past days.

Breitbart London reported yesterday on the comments of former Federal constitutional judge Udo di Fabio, who said the ‘basic laws’ (founding constitution) of the Federal Republic did not “guarantee the protection of all people worldwide through de facto or legal entry permits”.

One element of the basic law of Germany that has aroused attention among the growing body of individuals who are dissatisfied with the Chancellor’s migrant policies is article 20(4), which gives a right to “resist” any individual attempting to violate the constitutional order, “if no other remedy is available”.

Some have argued they now have the right to invoke this clause, as Chancellor Merkel apparently side-steps the elected parliament to enact her own policy. Breitbart London reported in October on the Federal prosecutors office being flooded with letters calling for legal proceedings to be opened against the Chancellor, accusing her of high treason.

German news reports at the time cited advice the letters were to be ignored, as it was not the opinion of the Federal government that the Chancellor was contravening the constitution.