Germany faces scrutiny over stalled constitutional court election and proposed information law reforms

A year after the Bundestag cancelled the 2025 election of three judges to the Federal Constitutional Court because the Union faction lacked a majority, jurist Frauke Brosius‑Gersdorf warned that the politicisation of the process has weakened public trust in democracy and urged stronger resilience for the court’s independence.

At the same time, the governing coalition’s draft reform of the 2006 Information Freedom Act, which would require requesters to demonstrate a special interest before obtaining documents, is being criticised by Hamburg’s data‑protection and information‑freedom officer Thomas Fuchs as a death of unconditional access. NGOs and the portal FragDenStaat have gathered about 470,000 signatures demanding the law remain unchanged.