Freedom of Information in Germany

Abstract

Guaranteeing open access to government information by means of freedom of information (FOI) laws has long been considered to be a powerful measure for achieving a variety of goals such as increasing accountability, improving governance, decreasing public sector corruption, empowering citizens and journalists, constraining politicians, and increasing bureaucratic efficiency. In light of these expectations, it is not surprising that over 80 countries around the world—including Germany—have passed FOI laws. Due to the nature of the federal system, the development of FOI legislation in Germany has taken place at different levels, namely, the federal and the state levels. At the federal level, FOI legislation reached its pinnacle at the end of 2005 when the Bundestag passed a comprehensive FOI law denoted as the Federal Act Governing Access to Information held by the Federal Government (IFG). Before the IFG came into force, four federal states already had started to pass FOI laws at the state level. By May 2018, 12 out of 16 German federal states had passed FOI laws. The distinction between FOI laws at the federal and the state level in Germany is crucial because both types of laws bind different types of governmental bodies, institutions, and organisations. Although both the IFG as well as the FOI laws at the state level are worthy of discussing, we focus on the IFG in this chapter. We present empirical evidence on the total number of requests and the beneficiaries of access to information and describe the entities bound by the law, the nature of the request for access, and the nature of the response/answer. We continue with providing insights into the relationship between documents and information, the methods of providing public information ex officio, and excepted information. Finally, we outline the timeframes for answering the requests, we describe the administrative and judicial remedies,and we provide some insights into the fees and expenses charged for requests. We conclude with a brief overall assessment of the IFG.