There's a petition against the proposed changes signed by more than 500.000 people. https://weact.campact.de/petitions/spd-stoppt-den-frontalangriff-auf-die-informationsfreiheit (in German).
Critics fear the reforms could weaken government transparency by curbing civil society's access to official information and limiting requests from foreigners.
Does that petition carry any actual weight in Germany? As an example, the Obama Administration created "We the People" where people could create and sign petitions to get the administration to...
Does that petition carry any actual weight in Germany?
As an example, the Obama Administration created "We the People" where people could create and sign petitions to get the administration to directly respond to them.
The popular Change.org petition site on the other hand is completely useless and holds zero actual weight other than making armchair activists feel like they've done something by doing less than the minimum.
This is only a private petition by an NGO. It doesn't mandate any action by the government. There is also a similar mechanism in Germany for petitions to the German federal parliament (Bundestag).
This is only a private petition by an NGO. It doesn't mandate any action by the government.
There is also a similar mechanism in Germany for petitions to the German federal parliament (Bundestag).
Thanks for insight. So if the NGO petition carries no weight and there is a way to petition the German gov't directly, why isn't the latter being used to voice opposition to this instead?
Thanks for insight.
So if the NGO petition carries no weight and there is a way to petition the German gov't directly, why isn't the latter being used to voice opposition to this instead?
I don't know how it works in the US but in Germany the government petition only guarantees that they have to look at it / discuss it publicly. The government doesn't have to change anything if...
I don't know how it works in the US but in Germany the government petition only guarantees that they have to look at it / discuss it publicly. The government doesn't have to change anything if they don't want to. I'm not sure if this would have a bigger impact as the NGO petition.
Well, the wonderful (sarcasm) thing about the US gov't is it doesn't have to make any change either. Obama's administration (it's since been mothballed) created it to allow the public to bring...
Well, the wonderful (sarcasm) thing about the US gov't is it doesn't have to make any change either. Obama's administration (it's since been mothballed) created it to allow the public to bring topics that they were obligated, even if self imposed, to respond/discuss. Still carries more weight than an NGO petition that can be completely ignored.
Because it's far less popular, unfortunately, and people (in the aggregate) only care about "I signed something", not "I made an actual impact", as you've already correctly identified is also the...
Because it's far less popular, unfortunately, and people (in the aggregate) only care about "I signed something", not "I made an actual impact", as you've already correctly identified is also the case for Change.org.
This is the official digital petitioning tool by the federal government, for reference: https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/epet/petuebersicht/mz.nc.html
And the kicker: IIRC only 30,000 signatures (or it might be 50k, not sure) are required for the relevant legislative chamber (Bundestag, "house") to have to deal with it.
Note how the number of signatures ("Mitzeichnungen") is drastically lower, despite private campaigning sites working essentially the same way: Sign up via email, support a petition.
Edit: In this comment I'm linking to the equivalent "official" petition.
Follow-up to my other comment: This is the equivalent "official" petition on the federal government site: https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2025/_03/_27/Petition_179709.nc.html It has...
It has already been marked as completed, as the responsible office explains in this PDF found in the sidebar of the petition's page above (in German): The topic has already been "forwarded to the Federal Ministry of the Interior".
Oh well.
This is a bit of a different problem, but I can say that our equivalent in NZ, the OIA (and the LGOIMA) is absolutely being abused and needs reform too. The Acts were written with the idea that a...
This is a bit of a different problem, but I can say that our equivalent in NZ, the OIA (and the LGOIMA) is absolutely being abused and needs reform too. The Acts were written with the idea that a citizen or resident could access information from a public agency at will, back in the age of pen and paper. They were not written with the idea that people would email fishing expeditions to 200 public agencies in the CC field, and they were certainly not written with the idea that a random bored person could get GenAI to create 10 paragraphs of a technically valid yet impossible to parse request.
Yes, you can ask them to refine and we have the withholding grounds, but that processing still takes time, and the numbers of requests keeps rising.
There's a petition against the proposed changes signed by more than 500.000 people.
https://weact.campact.de/petitions/spd-stoppt-den-frontalangriff-auf-die-informationsfreiheit (in German).
Does that petition carry any actual weight in Germany?
As an example, the Obama Administration created "We the People" where people could create and sign petitions to get the administration to directly respond to them.
The popular Change.org petition site on the other hand is completely useless and holds zero actual weight other than making armchair activists feel like they've done something by doing less than the minimum.
This is only a private petition by an NGO. It doesn't mandate any action by the government.
There is also a similar mechanism in Germany for petitions to the German federal parliament (Bundestag).
Thanks for insight.
So if the NGO petition carries no weight and there is a way to petition the German gov't directly, why isn't the latter being used to voice opposition to this instead?
I bet you have to use De-mail and the German NGOs only know how to fax things.
I don't know how it works in the US but in Germany the government petition only guarantees that they have to look at it / discuss it publicly. The government doesn't have to change anything if they don't want to. I'm not sure if this would have a bigger impact as the NGO petition.
Well, the wonderful (sarcasm) thing about the US gov't is it doesn't have to make any change either. Obama's administration (it's since been mothballed) created it to allow the public to bring topics that they were obligated, even if self imposed, to respond/discuss. Still carries more weight than an NGO petition that can be completely ignored.
Because it's far less popular, unfortunately, and people (in the aggregate) only care about "I signed something", not "I made an actual impact", as you've already correctly identified is also the case for Change.org.
This is the official digital petitioning tool by the federal government, for reference: https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/epet/petuebersicht/mz.nc.html
And the kicker: IIRC only 30,000 signatures (or it might be 50k, not sure) are required for the relevant legislative chamber (Bundestag, "house") to have to deal with it.
Note how the number of signatures ("Mitzeichnungen") is drastically lower, despite private campaigning sites working essentially the same way: Sign up via email, support a petition.
Edit: In this comment I'm linking to the equivalent "official" petition.
Follow-up to my other comment: This is the equivalent "official" petition on the federal government site:
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2025/_03/_27/Petition_179709.nc.html
It has already been marked as completed, as the responsible office explains in this PDF found in the sidebar of the petition's page above (in German): The topic has already been "forwarded to the Federal Ministry of the Interior".
Oh well.
This is a bit of a different problem, but I can say that our equivalent in NZ, the OIA (and the LGOIMA) is absolutely being abused and needs reform too. The Acts were written with the idea that a citizen or resident could access information from a public agency at will, back in the age of pen and paper. They were not written with the idea that people would email fishing expeditions to 200 public agencies in the CC field, and they were certainly not written with the idea that a random bored person could get GenAI to create 10 paragraphs of a technically valid yet impossible to parse request.
Yes, you can ask them to refine and we have the withholding grounds, but that processing still takes time, and the numbers of requests keeps rising.