A German journalist and editor of the portal “FragDenStaat”, which promotes citizens’ right to access information, has warned against plans by the Union parties to abolish the right to state information. The plans are based on a draft paper from the working group on “modern justice”, which was leaked to the public. According to the draft, Philipp Amthor, the general secretary of the CDU in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Union’s negotiator in the working group, would demand the end of the Freedom of Information Act.
The portal “FragDenStaat” aims to facilitate citizens’ access to official information by allowing them to submit requests to authorities based on various freedom of information laws. In the past 20 years, the service has received almost 300,000 requests.
The leaked 12-page coalition negotiations of the working group, titled “KOA-AG 9: Bürokratierückbau, Staatsmodernisierung, Moderne Justiz”, provide insight into the planned intentions of the Union. In the section titled “Stärkung der repräsentativen Demokratie”, it is stated that the Bundestag should be developed into a more modern legislative body, allowing it to effectively control the government and administration.
The draft paper contains text passages in red (SPD) and blue (CDU) font, adding comments, questions, or demands. On page 4, it is written in blue font: “We will abolish the Freedom of Information Act in its current form.”
In a commentary, Semsrott writes: “The negotiator of the Union in the working group is Philipp Amthor. The jurist knows the law for state transparency from his own experience: in the context of his controversial side job for the company Augustus Intelligence, Amthor misused the Bundestag’s letterhead in 2018 to lobby for the company at the Ministry of Economics [RT DE reported]. Through our research using the Freedom of Information Act, we were able to uncover the scandal and publish Amthor’s lobbying letter. Now, the CDU MP apparently wants to prevent FragDenStaat and the public from further controlling him in the future.”
The portal is currently being used in several questionnaires by private citizens to investigate the “Corona crisis”, for example, by data analyst Tom Lausen or blogger Aya Velázquez.
The Semsrott article reminds that through the Freedom of Information Act in the past 20 years, “many scandals came to light that would have remained in the dark without the law”. As examples, it mentions “the plagiarism scandals around Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Franziska Giffey, conflict of interests around the Climate Foundation MV and Nord Stream 2 and the funding scandal in the Ministry of Education”.
According to the Union’s plans, under Amthor’s guidance, it is planned to establish a judicial service modeled after the scientific service of the Bundestag, which is only available to parliamentarians in the government quarter. This would explicitly deny the opportunity for critical citizens and journalists to access state information.