Germany set to restrict its Freedom of Information Act

"SPD will block this" is contradicted by SPD already voting for the identical Berlin version weeks ago.

First phrase in the article: "Shortly before the German parliament's summer recess, lawmakers approved a whole series of reforms." Sounds like "done and dusted" to me. The Bundesrat (the second chamber of the parliament) also approved, er... something, but it's not clear to me if it's just the health measures or also the rest. What's left is for the Bundespräsident to sign it, but that's a formality.

And yes, no idea why the SPD is so on board with this - some measures, like having to provide a medical certificate from the first day of an illness (which in practice means you have to go see a doctor personally on the first day of sickness), are definitely not going to increase the dismal approval ratings of this government. So, for example, if you're prone to migraines, until now you would have simply called in sick for a day, now you have to drag yourself to the doctor, only for them to tell you (after potentially hours of waiting) "oh, you do look very pale and sickly today, you probably do have a migraine, here's the certificate. I assume you already took one or several headache pills? Now please, go home and rest."?!

Their coalition partner is only publicly against it if there is little chance this criticism has any practical political effect. The SPD as a party is very much in favour of more or less all surveillance laws for citizens, and the contrary for public officials.

Sometimes they pretend otherwise, but only if the above rule applies. Not a dependent partner if you want to preserve freedoms for transparency and against surveillance.

A country in decay..

How about keeping the information public from start so a request is not even needed?

I can explain this: when a citizen opposes a politician, the citizen is a terrorist. It doesn't matter what the actual disagreement is.

There is more to it. To request information you have to have some "legitimate interest" which is not yet defined and sounds like an easy way to not give out information.

Also no more NGOs. They were the ones who had the most power to wrestle information out of the hands of rather unwilling parties. The cost of going to court for this would deter most private persons.

Maybe, but the more problematic part is disallowing NGOs from submitting information requests. Multiple previous corruption scandals in Germany were exposed exactly because NGOs themselves were allowed to submit these information requests (and pay for them).

Such a restriction isn’t patently unreasonable but it would make it more difficult for foreign journalists to do research, and it would add the hassle of requiring individuals to show proof of residence when submitting a request. Anonymous requests under pseudonyms would become impossible.

For what it’s worth, only a handful of US states have a residency requirement for FOIA requests.

Won't this require citizen to provide ID and therefore citizens asking difficult questions could become a target for retaliation?

Not really.

The main "purpose" for such information is to be published, and at that point it makes no difference who exactly requested it.

Personal view:

The current mainly governing party in Germany (CDU/CSU) is a bunch of incompetent, nepotistic gerontocrats, and this change is mainly intended to make it harder for independent press to air their dirty laundry.

Just for reference: Approval rating for Merz (chancellor) is under 20% (!!); even Trump is >35%.

What about watchdog groups?

Lol, do you seriously think the 'alternative' would be any more progressive when it comes to freedom of information (or government transparency in general) once they'd be in power?

Rumour goes that too many high ranking fraudulent CDU-politicians were exposed with this (Philipp Amthor and Jens Spahn for example).

Recently there was a days long blackout in the middle of winter in Berlin due to a left-extremist attack on power line infrastructure [1]. This was mainly because all those critical infrastructure information is publicly accessible. I can imagine the goal is to prevent such critical information being publicly available in the future.

Also, there was big scandal from then health minister of Germany [2] and the information came out through various media out lets. I can imagine the politicians wants to prevent that happening in the future as well, so the corruption would go undetected (this is just my opinion)

[1]- https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-how-dangerous-are-left... [2] - https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-german-govt-suffers-defeat-in...

Retaliation for exposing major character flaws of the chancellor’s cabinet and potentially corruptness of major CDU (Christian Democratic Union) figures close to the chancellor seems a plausible answer.

FoIA requests humiliated half of the chancellor’s cabinet this year, including the chancellor himself.

The agricultural minister (CSU)(CDUs sister party) was especially proud of his nickname "the black butcher".

Someone sent a request inquiring about the hygiene protocols of his butchers shop via FoIA and he rather closed shop to deny access to the protocols than hand them out. This is now in front of a court and the media made fun of him for being the black butcher without a butchery.

Digital Minister (CDU) went on TV and proudly announced no more fax machines in his ministry.

Someone sent his undersecretary a fax the same day with the title "Jäger des verlorenen Faxes" which translates into "hunter of the lost fax" and is a Hommage to the German Indiana Jones raiders of the last ark movie title.

Two weeks later the minister sat in an interview and said he needed to correct himself. If he sees another fax machine in his ministry it’s going to get thrown out.

There was a huge conference that is run annually by a company the culture minister (CDU) is controlling that allowed access to major German political figures including private talks, including the minister of economy (CDU), for a fixed price.

It was only uncovered by a FoIA request. It was so bad the Bavarian prime minister had to pull any funding and recommendations to the conference and had to stay away from it after going there for years.

Just this week the mayor of Berlin (CDU) had to give up his spot as top candidate in the upcoming mayoral race because he lied to the press and even lied repeatedly about phoning with the chancellor during the major attack on the energy infrastructure in Berlin by allegedly left-wing extremists.

A FoIA request busted the lying mayor as well as the lying chancellor, whose ministry couldn’t provide any proof they telephoned at all at the time they both said they had phoned, when a court asked them to deliver proof to the court.

This is only on the federal level, in a single year.

IFG/FoIA busted tons of lying and cheating local politicians over the years. Of course, the party that is involved in most of the heavy cases does want this law to die or be completely ineffective.

It’s very annoying for the chancellor that normal people have the right to inform themselves by whom and how decisions were made as soon as public money is involved.

But he’s also calling every German citizen lazy and cheating with sick days, etc., so I’d say the German people have a huge reason to distrust this cabinet and use the IFG/FoIA as the small man’s nuclear bomb, and the cabinet really doesn’t like that the peasants can fight back with the most annoying weapon in their arsenal, counter-bureaucracy.

I dont think so, they want to repeat it, security-force should be implemented like in east-Germany, capitalism like in west-Germany and the wall is now in the Ukraine build with dead bodies instead of stone.

Germany has learned from history and become Israel's biggest supporter.

It's the continuation of a process that is going on for 25-30 years. As others have noted, Germany's industrial base is eroding due to high energy costs and Chinese competition. Its political decisions over the last two decades have been questionable, accelerating the decline and any true reform is unlikely to get a majority in the current gerontocratic society. There is no need to attribute this to malice, I think it can adequately be explained by incompetence.

> which raises the question who asks for this?

Probably the 5000 ultra-rich who own 27% of Germanys wealth. CDU/CSU and even AfD is great news for them.

https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/05/27/5000-ultra-rich...

Sorry this is more an effect of your social media consumption .

I don't deny the problem the country is facing but your doom is multiplied by social media.

Touch some grass, maybe pay for traditional media and you get a view of the trade offs the government is facing. It doesnt mean you have to agree with the choice but you know...

" Industry and trade associations aren't happy either, which raises the question who asks for this? " A comprise is good if everyone involved is unhappy.

" As a German citizen let me tell you, the rate of decline this country is in is truly shocking. " Just let you know. Most AfD members share your sentiment. Maybe you should qquestion this feeling.

> This is by far the worst government in my lifetime

I guess we all can safely conclude that all governments of the word (world's government? shoot that tinfoilhat), at least those who have any meaningful means of destruction at hand, are the worst not only in our, but also our parents' lifetimes (assuming the mean age of HN commenters as 30-40).

TL;DR: The fascism is back.

When you are leading manufacturing power in region and loosing markets to China while allowing external powers to destroy your energy supplies(banning nuclear and blowing Nord Stream 2).

No political bullshit will help with objective reality, being it rightoids who promise "optimizing" social spendings(while leaching on corruption) or leftoids who want to tax the rich(which will just drive factories and businesses to Poland/China/etc).

It's not just foreign nationals that would be barred from issuing requests but non-profit organizations as well. Also, the cap on fees would be eliminated, further increasing the barriers for people wanting to issue requests.

The problem is not to restrict it to German citizens, but removing it for everything which is not a citizen, like civil rights organizations, environment organizations, and everyone else who has a legit interest to check on the governments work.

What is the rationale to restrict it to citizens? Do you prefer a more open or more closed society?

How about the us citizen who is a permanent resident in Germany? German family? Business partners?

This is a minor point. It gives the government broad power to reject any request, associations and media outlets are excluded, it costs more and the mandatory REDACTION OF NAMES is undercutting accountability completely.

Yea, I don't give a shit wether only citizen should be able to request data.

It excludes organisations and increases fees. So, if say Amnesty or Greenpeace (two NGOs opposing this act) want to FoI something, they have to get a German citizen to do it for them, possibly at considerable expense - and you bet if they try to compensate them, it'll be "foreign interference" and an excuse for suppression.

Like GDPR, the existence of FoI laws give government agencies a reason to develop systems to quickly and effortlessly give people the access they're entitled to. Given the existence of such systems (analogous to the "data takeout" systems businesses must have for PII), giving access to foreigners as well should be unproblematic. It's supposed to be public information in the first place, roadblocks have no place.