Christian Wirth, September 10, 2026, Constitution Protection Office

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/93, pp. 11497-11498.

Frau President. Herr Minister. Valued colleagues.

In the year 2016 - ten years ago - the addition in the Federal budget for the 
Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution amounted to some 260 million 
euros. Since then, the Constitution Protection clearly receives almost every year 
a growth of means. In the year 2025, the means already amounted to 577 million 
euros. In the present budget for the year 2026 we have reached 690 million euros. 
In the budget plan for the year 2027, it is as per the government draft 860 million
euros, again an increase of some 25 percent in comparison to the previous year. 
What have the taxpayers received for that as a return? Since the CDU-led Federal
government under Merkel opened the borders, numerous Islamist terror attacks 
have been thwarted. Some unfortunately could not be prevented. In nearly all 
thwarted cases, if not even in every, single case, the decisive evidence came 
from secret services of our foreign partners. The Federal Office for Protection of 
the Constitution is blind. 

Why is that so? For one, the Federal Intelligence Service and the Federal Office  
for Protection of the Constitution [VS] lack authority and, for another, the 
German secret service for years is misused for criminalizing unfavored opinions 
of citizens and the opposition. A unique proceeding among democratic states!
The Federal government now wants to work on the problem of the absent 
authority, yet with its planned reforms clearly goes too far. For Interior Minister
Dobrindt has overtaken from his predecessor the partisan political narrative that
the greatest danger proceeds from the extreme right. 

Instead of, at enormous expense, gathering crimes of opinion and construing an 
unconstitutionality beneath the threshold of criminal culpability, the VS should 
apply itself to the actual threats to our free, democratic basic order. Those are 
espionage, terrorism and violence-prone extremism.

The Constitution Protection shall however in the future not only observe, 
evaluate and report, but itself covertly intervene in the reality. Among other 
things are foreseen the access to private IT systems, entrances of domestic 
dwellings, interventions in data connections, as well as the deletion or 
falsification of stored information. Those affected, under circumstances, could
never come to know of such measures. 

Especially alarming is the planned possibility of recruiting of 16 and 17 year olds
as confidantes. Minors would thereby be made paid informers of a domestic 
secret service. This is no harmless instrument of inquiry, ladies and gentlemen, 
but an attack on trust, family, school and social cohesion. A state, Herr Minister, 
which makes spies of minors tends not to freedom but to denunciation. 

Still more heavily weighs that the Constitution Protection's draft shall enable 
diverting or altering data streams, providing false information and deleting or 
falsifying stored data. The secret service thereby from observer becomes actor.
And the control is not convincing. An independent control council is indeed 
foreseen. In urgent cases the authorities' administration shall nevertheless be able
to immediately carry out measures. The control then follows subsequently, while 
a report on the Mebrofenin [radioactive tracer] can be permanently omitted. The 
control board in addition shall be elected by the parliamentary control board on 
which the largest opposition delegation, the AfD delegation, is denied a seat on 
partisan political grounds, even though it is legally entitled [rechtlich zusteht].

Konstantin von Notz (Green): You will not be elected! In a 
democracy elected! You are entitled to absolutely nothing!
[Ihnen steht gar nichts zu!]

The obviously partisan political misuse of the Constitution Protection now certainly
becomes public when party politicians of all colors strike an alarm shortly before 
a possible AfD-led State government. The State Office for Protection of the 
Constitution may in the end be accountable to an AfD interior minister. Hear, hear!
Involuntarily comic and self-revealing!

The chief of the Thüringen Constitution Protection Office and SPD member 
Stephen Kramer wants in the future to withhold from the Sachsen-Anhalt 
colleagues, for example, information from the Constitution Protection association,
and have specific agents and sources withdrawn and overtaken by other authorities.
Many citizens may ask themselves in regards such plans what then is actually sought
to be hidden with such measures. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the AfD stands for a domestic secret service which occupies 
itself with the actual threats. 

Sebastian Fiedler (SPD): Say for once something on Russia! I'm
listening! What do we do with Russia?

Those are terrorism, espionage and violence-prone extremism. Here, we extend the
hand, Herr Minister. 

Many thanks and Glück auf!

[trans: tem]

Alexander Jungbluth, August 12, 2026, AfD Excluded from Local Elections

EU Parliament, August 12, 2026.

Written Question E-003265/2026.

Following the exclusion of several AfD members from local elections in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, a large number of AfD candidates have now been prevented from running in the local elections on 13 September 2026 by the electoral committees in Lower Saxony. The candidates in question are Member of the Lower House of the German Parliament Martin Sichert (Friesland council election), Member of the State Parliament Thorsten Moriße (Wilhelmshaven mayoral election), Justin Vogel (Herzberg am Harz mayoral election) and Reinhild Goes (Nörten-Hardenberg mayoral election). What’s different about the situation in Lower Saxony is that the decision has been made on the basis of the new local election law adopted in April 2026 by the SPD–Green state government, which provides that, in cases of doubt regarding loyalty to the constitution, recommendations from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Ministry of the Interior may be taken into account – although the AfD has not been banned.

1. Does the Commission consider the exclusion of democratically elected party representatives from local elections solely based on the fact that they are part of the AfD to be a possible violation of fundamental democratic principles of the EU?

2. What does it make of this case, considering that it effectively constitutes an exclusion of a party through the back door, when such a decision should be the sole responsibility of the Federal Constitutional Court?

3. In view of the above, will it consider initiating a procedure under Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) against Germany?

Stephan Brandner, July 9, 2026, Surveillance State

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/89, pp. 10939-10940.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

One aspect so far comes up somewhat short, namely, the activity of the 14 state
media institutions financed from compulsory fees, the duty of which is to secure
the variety of the offerings and of the opinions, to protect the media freedom and 
supervise private broadcasters.  It should be thought, with that, these institutions 
were used to capacity. Yet a couple of days ago we read what these institutions 
may still put out. By means of artificial intelligence, they uninterruptedly 
rummage through the internet, thus without cause spy on all citizens and pass on 
the knowledge thus gained to those of the so-called Constitution Protection 
Office, the domestic secret service. And what they thus thereby put out, can be 
imagined in one’s darkest thoughts.  

With a software which bears the nice name of KIVI, media guardians sift
through the internet. How, what, where, exactly how gathered remains
a secret. We nevertheless know: From 2022 until today, KIVI has identified
nationwide over 130,000 alleged violations of the law. These offenses were
automated and reported to the Federal Criminal Office. Contact data, photos, 
audios, videos, data, region, reactions, religious and ideological convictions, 
political opinions, data on sexual orientation – these state media institutions 
filter all of that from the internet. One needs imagine what is loose there, 
ladies and gentlemen. 

The good George Orwell once accordingly expressed himself, cite:
“To need live in belief every noise made was heard, every movement
observed.” – Dark words of Orwell from the novel 1984, which meanwhile 
are sadly a mournful reality. 

The state surveillance apparatus grows and flourishes, ja, it routinely blooms. 
The compulsory financed public broadcasting serves in fact the uncontrolled 
manipulation of opinion and the propaganda. The state media institutions
on the other side overtake the surveillance on the internet. How precisely 
and with which consequences remains in the dark. The intimidation 
apparatus unfortunately functions very well in Germany. 

And not only that: Free podcasters will in addition be blocked by the state 
media institutions intervening for statements thought to be false, and these 
are immediately presented or classified as not true. Otherwise in the blather 
shows and news bulletins in the state broadcasting at ARD and ZDF: 
There, lies and propaganda can be spread unfiltered and unpunished. Never 
have I understood that Lanz, Hayali and consorts were requested to contradict 
falsehoods with moderation, or keep to the truth. Two different standards! 
And that is scarcely communicable [vermittelbar], ladies and gentlemen.

Freedom of opinion ends there where the over-reaching state begins, and there 
we are already too far. The state media institutions make themselves a part of 
this apparatus for accomplices and for a Zenzurapparat. They all know as of  
September Leif-Erik Holm in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and our friend Uli
Siegmund in Sachsen-Anhalt will clean up and this construct will be brought to 
a collapse. For that, we work dawn to dusk, ladies and gentlemen.

Many thanks. 

[trans: tem]

Leif-Erik Holm, July 9, 2026, Public Broadcasting

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/89, pp. 10933-10934.

Dear citizens. Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The theme of public broadcasting [öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk, ÖRR]
affects very many people. They are rightly discontent with an extremely 
expensive broadcasting which we all need to finance and which at the same
time often reports without balance. When over 40 percent of the citizens no 
longer trust the ÖRR along the path, then is clear: We need to change 
things, and that we will do. I personally will also do that in my 
homeland in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern if I should become the next 
minister-president.

The question is: Is in the digital age still at all required so large a public 
broadcasting? The media supply is meanwhile gigantic; there are many 
free providers on the internet. And that is thus good. In this place, I thank 
all who are active on the internet, for thus has been developed a corrective
for a public broadcasting very close to the state. I say in addition not 
everything on the internet pleases me. Yet there is a distinction to public
broadcasting: I need not pay for it. 

Martin Renner (AfD): So it is!

And exactly that is it. While we need pay for everything on the ZDF, even 
for a dose of poison like Böhmermann, things can be freely received on the
internet. I can really understand anyone who no longer wants to finance 
the format like “Böhmermann” and Co. 

Maik Brückner (Linke): I don’t want to finance you!

That of course goes for me exactly so. Unfortunately, there are too many 
examples of it.

It is ever again the problem in the public broadcasting: It plainly does not 
report as it would be in its contract, objectively and balanced, but it ever 
again has a slant. We see that in the talkshow invitations, in the ever again 
tendentious reporting. For example, it was asserted in the NDR, in regards 
me in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, our government program had a völkisch-
nationalistischen keynote – completely absurd!

Everyone who has seen the program sees it. Even other journalists shake 
their heads over it. Or it is seen in the “Correctiv” fairy tales, or in the attack
on Elon Musk, he had called for a hunt of migrants. That completely
by-passes the truth. On that account: The ÖRR need not complain about its
loss of trust.

The citizens do not want to pay 9 billion euros so as to then receive 
curated [betreutes] television. They want an honest service provider which
says to them what is, which shows them the entire picture in a debate so 
that the people themselves can form an opinion. And here the public 
broadcasting ever again fails. 

Maik Brückner (Linke): Just don’t scream so!

In addition, the costs run out of control. When intendants earn more than 
the Federal Chancellor – over 400,000 euros per year – that can be 
explained to no one. We will change that. 

We need also end the power of parties in the supervisory boards. I find 
it an unequalled impudence that in regards to me in Mecklenburg-
Vorpommern, the Minister-president Schwesig deployed two active State
legislative politicians in the NDR broadcasting council. I find that simply
not suitable.

One thing is clear, ladies and gentlemen. If the AfD in the autumn 
overtakes responsibility in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, then there will be 
reforms. For the broadcasting clearly needs to become cheaper. It needs 
to guarantee a balanced reporting. And the partisan clique at the 
broadcasting and administration council needs to stop.

Therefore, my promise: As minister-president, I will directly after 
overtaking office cancel the NDR broadcasting contract

Vice-president Josephine Ortleb: Your speaking time is 
at an end. 

because it is necessary. 

[trans: tem]

Alice Weidel, July 9, 2026, Industry, Budget, Free Speech

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/89, pp. 10882-10883.

Frau President. Herr Chancellor. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The Chancellor is there; I can see him back there.

Beatrix von Storch (AfD): He shuns the picture in common!

Herr Merz, since you are in office, with narrow-minded assurance you do 
the opposite of what you have promised and what would be right for this
country. 

Michael Kellner (Greens): “Narrow-minded assurance”, yet you 
know of what you speak, or?

You wanted to speak on the situation. You have not done it; for the situation
in this country is disastrous. Month by month, 15,000 industrial workplaces 
fall away. The auto industry is in a downfall. The de-industrialization turns 
into mass flight. Even Volkswagen staggers. 100,000 workplaces are on the 
verge. Suppliers and service providers fall like dominoes. Not a week without 
bad news. The German Mittelstand expends reserves. The insolvency tsunami 
expels prosperity and good jobs from Germany. Every 20 minutes a German 
firm goes bankrupt. The productive future investments have fallen to the null 
point. Germany has declined in international competition.

The ideological costs of your Politik and the Politik of your predecessors 
burden the German economy and all Germans and are no longer to be borne. 
At 6 trillion – 6,000 billion – euros estimates the economist Bernd 
Raffelhüschen the accumulated costs of the German migration policy. So 
expensive again becomes the failed energy transition if it is then executed to 
the bitter end, and nothing other than an industrial desert is left behind in 
Germany.

And the citizens and the taxpayers? They grow poor. They feel the downfall 
every day in their own pocketbook. The sozial spending explodes. It rises faster 
than the pay. Who works and pays taxes, he is the dummy torn between rising 
tax and duties costs, escalating costs for energy, housing, cost of living, and 
shrinking real incomes which everywhere do not suffice for a living. Out of 
such a situation there is only one exit: To lower the state expenditures, to 
eliminate all that is superfluous from the budget, to end the ideological wrong 
way, to leave in the citizens’ pocket more of the hard earned money, and to 
immediately liberate the economy from bureaucratic and fiscal restraints and 
immediately end the artificial increased expense and scarcity of energy. That 
is precisely what you promised the citizens before the election. You do the 
opposite. 

Instead, you deride the taxpayer with an anti-reform package which lifts the 
exploitation to the next stage. You preen yourself with a fake tax reform. You
do not relieve the taxpayer, you further burden him. You increase and discover
new taxes on tobacco, plastic, alcohol, sugar and crypto investments. You cut 
the parents money, burden families, increase the sozial contributions. Under the 
title “rich tax”, a pure tax of envy, you draw money from the pocket of the 
Mittelstand. You load the accounting for the expenditures. You one-sidedly
seek out the taxpayers and contribution payers and in addition insult them – 
they should work more and longer, not so many sick days – as complainers who 
should step aside, if you please. 

So that citizens and journalists put fewer inconvenient questions, you tighten  
the freedom of information law. You give more competences to the secret 
services and to the Constitution Protection. Ja, the fleecing and the suppression 
of the citizens and of the opposition need to conclusively proceed with the state
repression. 

And that fits that today your Ursula von der Leyen of the CDU in the EU 
Parliament wants again to have by expedited motion a vote on the total control
of the citizens, chat control, after this was rejected umpteen times. Vote until it
passes! By the total control in autos, in the chats, you thus want to control the 
citizens, while Ursula von der Leyen has deleted her Pfizer deals by SMS.

Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): It’s about sexual abuse of children!

I say to you one thing: To you applies the saying “All men are equal, many are 
more equal”. And that exactly is your CDU Politik summed up. 

You put forward a draft budget and a finance plan which explode all limits 
of  the spending frenzy and debt-making. You thereby further finance the eco-
socialist climate protection ideology of which the rest of the world for long 
wants to know nothing more. You continue to squander billions and billions 
of  euros for useless development aid which makes BlackRock still richer and 
nourishes some profiteers and lobbyists. With your Politik, you serve not 
Germany, but perhaps secure for yourself a high paid occupation by 
connection after you have left behind nothing other than scorched earth.
You pump additional untold sums into the NGO swamp and into the migration
industry, even when its favorites sink into a morass of corruption and infidelity; 
or, like the flight assistant of the murderer of six in Stade – from the SPD – are 
entangled in criminal machinations. 

You stir up Kriegsangst, and mis-use this as a license so as to, under the pretext
 of security expenditures, let fall the last inhibitions in regards debt-making. You
drive the arms spending to astronomical heights, without that thereby something
would be won for Germany’s security. Instead, you construct a state-controlled
and -financed armaments economy as a replacement for the real industry directed 
to fundamentals – an armaments industry the products of which you donate to 
the Ukraine. 

Year by year, you want to make more than 200 billion euros in debts; that is 
one trillion euros until 2030. In the next year alone, we pay interest in the sum 
of 40 billion euros, this year 32 billion euros. This then accumulates until 2030. 
I know, you laugh, you find that funny. 

Heidi Reichinnek (Linke): We don’t laugh. We suffer. 

To 2030, we have an interest service of 80 billion euros. – Listen to yourselves, 
for you cannot deal with numbers, especially you of the SPD. You can’t do it. –
You thereby risk losing Germany’s top rating in the capital markets. Your 
financial policy drives Germany directly into state bankruptcy, and the owners, 
the citizens with homes and mortgages, into ruin. Who profits? Perhaps BlackRock
or international investors can purchase at the lowest prices the German real estate 
in the year 2029 or 2030 at the latest. There again is closed the circle for this 
Chancellor Merz.

You leave behind a heap of rubble for those who come after you. A heap of 
rubble! I can say one thing to you: We will, despite this, accept the challenge and 
do the necessary when the voters give us the mandate. 

Dirk Weise (SPD): That, they will not do!

And when everything will have been knocked kaputt by you, we will liberate the 
state budget, the sozial system and the taxpayer from unnecessary and harmful 
spending and subventions. We will cut back the rampant Staatsapparat, halt 
the mass migration into the sozial system and push the consistent deportation 
of illegals and criminals. And we will abolish the individual right to asylum! We 
will end the ideological energy transition and lower the oppressive energy costs 
and tax burden. We are ready to overtake responsibility for Germany. Finally 
make free the way for a new government!

Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): Boring!

That is the one service which you can still do for this country, Herr Merz!

Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): Boring! Always the same!

[trans: tem]

Christine Anderson, May 19, 2026, EU Veto Right

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2026)05-19(2-0150-0000).

Mr. President, history teaches us something important: political systems tend to become more bureaucratic when confidence in their political leadership dwindles. Once democratic trust declines, institutions attempt to compensate through procedures, frameworks and mechanisms. Bureaucracy, however, must not ever replace legitimacy. As Hannah Arendt warned, bureaucracy easily becomes the rule of nobody, a system in which decisions are made everywhere, while responsibility is nowhere to be found.

An EU without the veto right of Member States would slide down a very dangerous slippery slope, which we are actually seeing already. A Union that struggles to build democratic consent falls back on permanent crisis, government governance and an ever-increasing institutional expansion, while gradually hacking away at the very roots on which it rests – the sovereignty of its Member States.

But Europe does not need a permanent machinery of governance, nor does it need a foreign policy detached from its nations and peoples. It needs democratic legitimacy, and it needs accountability, and it needs leaders capable of building consensus between sovereign nations. Because once unanimity disappears, the EU ceases to be a union of equal nations, cooperating freely. It becomes something fundamentally different, a union subjecting sovereign nations to its rule – a foreign rule. History has seen such systems before – Rome, the Soviet Union. Hit the books, read up on it and draw the lessons.

Mary Khan, April 27, 2026, Correctiv Indemnification

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, P10 CRE-REV(2026)04-27(1-0246-0000). 

Frau President. 

Correctiv has received from the EU at least 400,000 euros – ostensibly for combatting disinformation. And what did Correctiv do? It used this money to itself spread disinformation. Since the so-called Potsdam affair, that alleged secret meeting, was a political campaign. The central assertion, the AfD wants to deport Germans with a migration background, was simply false. And this lie has harmed livelihoods. People were professionally, financially and socially affected. We therefore demand an immediate stop of support for Correctiv, the complete restitution of all received monies, and an indemnification of victims of this campaign. 

And I promise you: Sooner or later there will be an investigating committee. We will then speak on every, single cent which this lying rag, under the cover of ostensible fact checks, has inserted into leftist activism. 

 

[trans: tem]

Götz Frömming, March 20, 2026, Bookstores and Susanne Dagen

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/66, pp. 8013-8014. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Herr State Minister, one accusation can thus not be made against you: With you, it is not boring. Already in the second current hour within the briefest time. Yet I do not know whether that speaks unconditionally for your conduct of office. 

            Johannes Volkmann (CDU/CSU): Rather for the horseshoe theory! 

            Ottilie Klein (CSU/CSU): Yes, exactly!

Ladies and gentlemen, the protest of the exclusion of three leftist radical bookstores from the German publishing prize 

            Sören Pellmann (Linke): The book trade is leftist radical! Meine Fresse!

–  we plainly heard it – is a festival of double morality. After the Commissioner for Culture and Media made known his decision, politicians and cultural functionaries warned of a “climate of pre-censorship”. During the Leipzig Book Fair’s opening ceremony, demonstrators stood in front of the Gewandhaus with banners with inscriptions like “Protect Culture – Let Weimer Go!”, and “Red Card for Opinion Snooping!”. The head of the association exchange of the German book trade – which, besides, is that association which took a leading part in the expulsion of the rightist publishers from the two great book fairs – declared, cite: “We will not accept without complaint your autocratic gesture.” End citation. 

            Ronald Gläser (AfD): Inconceivable!

Ladies and gentlemen, here, a political milieu ostensibly fights for the freedom of the printed word. 

            Holger Mann (SPD): Owner-operated bookstores!

It is that same milieu which literally rolls over with demands for censorship and Verbot when it is against the right. And one is, ja, right when one simply contradicts this milieu. 

So as to comprehend this double morality, one needs just once imagine what would have happened 

            Jürgen Coße (SPD: Herr Frömming speaks of morality!

if the Dresden bookseller Susanne Dagen had been nominated for the prize. Ladies and gentlemen, she alone has called into being an entire book fair, and besides without tax money. She would truly have deserved this prize. 

Yet, what would likely have happened? There would have been calls for a boycott from your side, protest and tumult. The Antifa would have marched, etc. etc. Frau Dagen will likely never receive a state prize. Yet I suspect, ladies and gentlemen, she places no special value on that. 

The good of this debate is that it reveals the principal problem of the German cultural scene, and that is the leftist burden, and the hunger for subventions proceeding therefrom. From that then arises so grotesque an accusation as this: Herr Weimer undertakes a state intervention in the promotion of culture. – A State Minister for Culture intervenes in the state promotion of culture: Just imagine! 

            Jörg König (AfD): That is, ja, horrifying!

I ask myself, why at all should book selling be promoted with tax means? 

            David Schliesing (Linke): It will be distinguished!

Does then the grocer who sells wurst, the vehicle mechanic or the hairdresser receive help? Ladies and gentlemen, would it not be better we leave that completely? Why should the Commissioner for Culture and Media with tax money reward bookstores on the facades of which are written the words “Deutschland die, please”, or “Heimat is a call to murder.”? 

Ladies and gentlemen, I have put a minor inquiry; we’ve asked about four additional bookstores. The Interior Ministry’s information is now put forward; it arrived yesterday. It is therein said – I cite with your permission, Frau President: “An additional information on the booksellers named in the inquiry ‘BiBaBuZe […], Karl-Marx-Bookseller’ […] can, for reasons of the good of the state, not follow…Through a public information on the present degree of knowledge, the affected actors could develop defense strategies…”. 

Ladies and gentlemen, from this answer becomes clear that still more booksellers are apparently a case for the Constitution Protection. Herr Weimer, please proceed! 

As the alternative book fair Change Pages [Seiten Wechsel] in Halle took place, the cry of the culture scene called for a boycott and to put pressure on the fair operator to cancel the contract. As Berlin-Treptow was called upon to drive the rightist-conservative on-line portal “Apollo News” out of the district and pound away at it [Tasten zu hauen]. And now you behave as if someone trod on your corns [Hühneraugen getreten]. 

            Holger Mann (SPD): Is that a state institution?

Ladies and gentlemen, this double morality is hypocritical and mendacious. 

The freedom of art is inseparable. Either you make no distinction between left and right, or you refrain from your hypocritical outrage if the left, by way of exception for once, were treated like the right. Without exception! 

            David Schliesing (Linke): Oha!

Or, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps better still: We renounce entirely these prizes and subventions. The bookseller Susanne Dagen has shown: It goes, even without. 

I thank you. 

 

[trans: tem]

Markus Bucheit, April 8, 2026, EU Speech Codes

EU Parliament, Brussels, Question for written answer  E-001432/2026. 

Internal company emails released to the US House Judiciary Committee reveal that major platforms perceived participation in the Code of Practice on Disinformation and the Code of Conduct on Hate Speech as ‘effectively mandatory’, with agendas ‘set under strong impetus from the EU Commission’ and ‘consensus’ achieved under heavy regulatory pressure, especially once the Digital Services Act (DSA) was in sight. 

1.         How does the Commission reconcile its public claim that these codes are purely voluntary self-regulatory instruments with the reality that companies understood non-participation as exposing them to heightened enforcement risks and future DSA sanctions of up to 6 % of their global turnover? 

2.         Does the Commission acknowledge that using the threat of future binding legislation and severe fines to steer ‘voluntary’ commitments can create a chilling effect on lawful political speech and incentivize platforms to over remove controversial but legal content, particularly on migration, COVID-19 and gender ideology? 

3.         Will the Commission publish all its guidance, instructions and meeting readouts related to these codes, so that citizens and Parliament can assess whether its conduct remained within the limits of content neutral regulation, or whether it effectively dictated substantive editorial lines for private platforms?

Christine Anderson, March 9, 2026, Political Speech Regulation

EU Parliament, March 9, 2026 

Written questions to EU Commission E-001160/2026 

Documents disclosed in a report from the US House Judiciary Committee show that, as part of the EU Internet Forum, the Commission promoted a handbook of borderline content in relation to violent extremism that explicitly classifies ‘populist rhetoric’, ‘anti-EU content’, ‘anti-elite content’, ‘political satire’, ‘meme subculture’ and ‘anti-LGBTIQ content’ as problematic categories to be monitored or limited by platforms, even though these are in themselves lawful forms of political or social expression. 

1. How does the Commission justify equating lawful Eurosceptic or anti-establishment speech and political satire with ‘violent extremism’ in an official handbook, and on what precise legal basis did it urge platforms to use these categories for content moderation beyond what is strictly illegal under EU or national law? 

2. What safeguards did the Commission put in place to ensure that such guidance would not result in systematic discrimination against peaceful opposition movements, conservative viewpoints on migration and gender, or satirical criticism of EU institutions and policies?

Stephan Brandner, January 29, 2026, Free Speech and the German Judiciary

German Bundestag, January 29, 2026, Plenarprotokoll 21/56,  pp. 6782-6785. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Frau Wegge, in regards to what you have just said: The frontal attack on democracy certainly proceeds from Herr Spahn. Not without a reason is his place probably now free. Ladies and  gentlemen, freedom, before all, freedom of expression of opinion, is for us of the AfD of supreme importance. We were therefore already against the intensification of this gag order or lèse-majesté paragraph 188 StGB [penal code] in 2020, besides being the only sole democratic delegation here in house. The others find the persecution and criminalization of citizens either good – so like SPD, CDU and CSU – or they were indifferent – like the Greens or the then still existing FDP. It is said – Frau Wegge has referred to it – local politicians should be better protected. Yet already in 2020 was that a transparent cover-up of the true intentions. In truth, it is and was about, for your no more to be called old parties cartel of self-named quality democrats, your own protection from criticism and satire by criminalization of citizens and the instrumentalization of state prosecutors and the courts. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): That is just such rubbish! You yourself don’t believe it!

And then it precisely so came: Thousands of criminal proceedings by notices from Habeck, Baerbock, Strack-Zimmermann, 

            Axel Müller (CDU/CSU): …Weidel! Alice Weidel!

Fritz Merz and many other political powers. 

            Marcel Bauer (Linke): And Stefan Brandner!

Around 1,400 proceedings in year 2022, 2,600 proceedings in year 2023, 

            Sonja Eichwede (SPD): You speak of your own matter, ne?

4,500 proceedings in year 2024. 

            Lena Gumnior (Greens): How many proceedings are there against members                                           of your party? 

Thus explosive growth and massively absurd investigations, accusations and sentences fully unworthy of a state of law. 

            Rasha Nasr (SPD): Hundreds of notices from the AfD!

I name only for example the crusade of the judiciary – this compliant judiciary –         

             Helge Limburg (Greens): How many notices then has Frau Weidel presented?              Did you have the goodness to look into that? Do you find that also so bad?

against Stefan Niedhoff on account of the Habeck-Schwachkopf case, or the persecution of the chief editor of the Deutschland Kurier, David Bendels, on account of a fully harmless and substantially correct photo montage of the then still mighty, meanwhile Gott sei Dank slowly falling into oblivion Interior Minister Faeser. 

            Helge Limburg (Greens): What then did Frau Weidel say to your speech and                                             your draft law? She who is, ja, not here, the Frau Weidel? 

There followed upon these harmless acts of criticism and satire house searches and complaints. 

            Axel Müller (CDU/CSU): “Compliant judiciary”?

Draconian prison sentences on account of criticism and expressions of opinion; that, one needs imagine, and that in your democracy in Deutschland in which you have so conveniently established it. 

            Helge Limburg (Greens): Is it true that Frau Weidel has made a three-figure                          number of criminal complaints under §188? What then does she                                            say to that?

This system, hostile to freedom and citizens, functions exactly so as you previously planned it. We of the Alternative für Deutschland want to change that 

            Sonja Eichwede (SPD): Nein! You want to weaken the state of law!

and therefore put forward already in September of last year a draft law – this draft law [Drucksache 21/652] – which foresees the abolition of the §188, this special criminal law favoring the politicians. 

            Axel Müller (CDU/CSU): Do you doubt the independence of the judiciary?

Our conception of freedom and equality is namely what? Equal rights for all, quite simple. And because to all apply the general paragraphs on insult, slander, malicious defamation – §§185 to 187 StGB – no special penal law is required. 

We brought it in. Yet what was there in the first reading? Hate, agitation, meaningless vulgarity 

            Helge Limburg (Greens): Yes. But only from you! 

            Carmen Wegge (SPD): Everything covered by the freedom of opinion, ne?

from the old parties crowd against our draft, up to the colleague Wiegelmann of the CDU – whom I still hear – who in substance actually was in favor, who however today may not speak. Herr Wiegelmann, what have you done here? 

            President Julia Klöckner: Herr member, do you permit an interim question?

If you pause the time which continues, gladly. 

            President Julia Klöckner: Remain calm. I also can add and subtract in my head.

Ja. – Now probably comes a question for Alice Weidel and the supposed criminal complaint from her, or? 

            Axel Müller (CDU/CSU): Herr colleague Brandner, just a quite brief                                    interim question. – Did I rightly understand you? You’ve just                                                    designated the judiciary as compliant. It would thus interest me                                                whether you are of the conviction that the judiciary in this country                                        is independent or the servant of others? – Please.

Here, we of course need to differentiate, Herr colleague. 

            Carsten Müller (CDU/CSU-Braunschweig): That is not your strength!

We are not, ja, inclined – like you, obviously – to generalizations. 

            Sonja Eichwede (SPD): What then have you plainly done?

But it needs be quite precisely looked at. When I for example look at the proceeding against David Bendels at the Bamberg police court [Amtsgericht]: That was simply an activist justice [Gesinnungsjustiz] which took place. Embarrassing for any state of law! 

I also say of every function: The higher the court, the less so the march through the institutions has taken place. When I for example look at many of the higher administrative courts [Oberverwaltungsgerichte]: There, judgment will be rendered rightly according to law and statute, and not according to ideology. 

            Konrad Körner (CDU/CSU): That sounds like “Make a Wish”, Herr Brandner!

When I for example look at many of the appeals boards [Berufskammern] at the State courts: There, it might be similar. At the Higher Regional Courts [Oberlandesgerichten] it is still not that his leftist-green ideology is enforced. Thus, there one needs to differentiate. 

            Helge Limburg (Greens): This defamation of the judiciary is unbearable!                               It shows that you are a real opponent of the state of law. That, you emphasize             with this answer! That is outrageous!

Yet this left-green-woke march through the institutions, which persists, ja, for decades, has naturally not stopped short of the judiciary. And if you take a look at who in recent time, for example in State governments in which the Greens have participated, are nominated as Justice Minister, you may only shake the head. Earlier, it was not completely absurd to proceed on the basis that Justice Ministers should perhaps be jurists, and not anyhow quota women, quota men, quota queers who need a job. Yet in the meantime, the judiciary in Germany in fact has degenerated into a feed barn [Versorgungsstadel]. 

            Carmen Wegge (SPD): Thanks for the material, Herr Brandner.

Thus, look at it precisely. There is in fact activist justice. And you of the old parties of course make it very simple in that you create the corresponding laws. 

            President Julia Klöckner: With that, the question is answered. Thanks.

I had herein indicated: Hate, agitation, and vulgarity against our draft law. Suddenly, Jens Spahn arrived and said: Nee, §188 StGB must go. – I thought,  I do not hear correctly. We said: That makes us happy. We bring it into committee. If the CDU then cooperates, we may do it. – Suddenly, you in committee were again against it. What then is with your CDU/CSU delegation? The chief said: Hyah! You make: Whoa! I believe Jens Spahn is at the political firing post, or not? 

Ladies and gentlemen, it is thus not only about the abolition of a paragraph of injustice, but about the Union’s overall credibility. Pinocchios, con men, charlatans, mud-slingers; 

            Helge Limburg (Greens): Do you speak of your own delegation?

here, to whom does not immediately occur CDU or CSU names? Guttenberg, Merz, Schavan, Weimer, Günther, current Professor Dr. plag. Mario Voigt. Thus, if you want to carry on with this chain, then reject our draft law. 

            President Julia Klöckner: So now the time is truly up. You have greatly                                                     exceeded the time.

If you want to make honest Politik, want to be credible, then vote in favor of our motion. 

            President Julia Klöckner: I plainly gave a signal. Otherwise, I turn off                                                        your microphone. 

Many thanks, Frau Klöckner, for the generous handling of the time. 

 

[trans: tem]

Ruben Rupp, January 15, 2026, TTPA and Freedom’s Advocate

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/53, pp. 6312-6314. 

Right honorable President. Honored members. 

The CDU Minister-president Daniel Günther just a few days ago quite openly declared the press to be an enemy. He spoke of censorship, ja, even of a ban of free media – statements which, let us be honest, had they been used by an AfD minister-president 

            Bettina Hagedorn (SPD): Happily, there are none!

would have immediately led to demands for a party ban proceeding. They will now by the Union be relativized and applauded, dear colleagues of the CDU/CSU. If you have the decency, then distance yourself here and today from such authoritarian fantasies of the minister-president. 

            Maja Wallstein (SPD): You speak like the blind man of color. 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): Wow! Can the next speaker do the same?

Especially handy for Günther and his supporters is that the European Union meanwhile delivers precisely this tool suitable for his authoritarian dreams from the Digital Services Act, which the coordinating office for digital service in fact degrades to a censorship authority 

            Konrad Körner (CDU/CSU): That is false!

by the planned EU chat control which shall make possible an unfounded mass surveillance of citizens, up to a so-called decree on “transparency and targeting of political advertising”; in short: TTPA. And before you, as so often in these debates, respond to our motion [Drucksache 21/3609] with over-reaching allegations: 

            Ronja Kemmer (CDU/CSU): Mimimi!

Just because we want to cancel the TTPA is not to say we are against transparency or would tolerate foreign influence in elections. 

            Anna Luthmann (Greens): Ach so!

These fairy tales of the AfD as a supposed foreign marionette are simply untrue. Possibly you are simply envious because you yourselves scarcely still have international contacts. In short: This marionette card is in all cases the cheapest propaganda, and I am sure you will again today unpack this propaganda, because you have no arguments against the AfD and against this motion. 

            Sonja Lemke (Linke): We have quite good arguments against the AfD!

In fact, this decree is an attack on the opposition and freedom of the press. Yet in turn you come along. 

Ostensibly, the TTPA theme comes as so often with an apparently plausible reasoning: No influencing of elections! Yet it’s only about transparency. That this decree for transparency is not necessary is shown by the state of the social media prior to the introduction of this decree. 

I myself have connected digital advertising on Facebook. I needed to quite clearly specify who financed the advertisement, needed to authenticate it with the personal statement, and much more. That was transparent, that was sufficient. 

What now does the TTPA do beyond that? Expensive compliance, extremely difficult targeting, massive legal insecurity for platforms. What now exactly is political advertising? And at what point is it political advertising? – And a high risk of compensatory fines for the smallest mistakes! The result: The effective withdrawal of almost all large platforms – Meta with Facebook and Instagram, Google with YouTube. Since October 2025, political paid advertising in social media is de facto no longer possible. 

And whom does that harm? Not the governing parties, not the established media houses, 

            Johannes Schätzel (SPD): So far from the reality!

not ARD and ZDF. Harmed will be new parties, opposition forces, critical associations, candidates and think tanks. And yes, quite especially Germany’s strongest party, the AfD, will be harmed. Since we are present in the digital spectrum, because we enjoy no favorable, continual coverage by large publishing houses, or by public broadcasting media, like all of you here. 

What thus here is in fact happening is the targeted shutdown of a political competitor under the pretense of an ostensible transparency. I say: Away with this undemocratic, junk decree of the European Union! 

And if you now ask: Yes, AfD, what then is your solution for the influencing of elections? Quite simple: The fight against foreign influence is a duty of the security authorities, among others, the Federal intelligence service [BND, Bundesnachrichtendienst]. This ought to be strengthened. Since in the secret service work, we are meanwhile near completely dependent on the U.S.A. – and that because you in the area of security- and key-technologies have slumbered for years. That is your responsibility and your failure. 

Nevertheless, you are especially disillusioning in this debate – and this I cannot spare you, Herr Digital Minister Wildberger – with your cabinet draft law for political advertising transparency, the national ensuing legislation for the TTPA. This draft in regards so-called advertisers, thus parties, associations, business and political candidates, expressly enables house searches and seizures on account of ostensible violations of transparency. We are here quite quickly into criminal law. Who works politically needs in the future to thereby figure that he receives a house search. 

            Johannes Schätzel (SPD): Such rubbish!

And just retroactively can he defend himself against that. You thereby clearly create an intimidation effect. I ask you: Is that your idea of freedom of the press and fair, democratic competition? Ours is quite clearly not. 

And it becomes still worse. In regards danger in delay, house searches shall even be possible without legal writ. What may we then imagine of that? Does that mean that the successful pay videos, critical of the government, from Alice Weidel or from Nius chief Reichert are a danger in delay? The video is uploaded – danger in delay – and directly there are house searches on the initiative of the coordinating office for digital services which is controlled by the Digital Ministry? Need we imagine it? 

            Johannes Schätzel (SPD): Nein!

That something so is at all in a cabinet draft is incomprehensible. On this account, I say: Without delay, take back these regulations, Herr Digital Minister. 

If you do not believe me: It is in black and white in §6 and §7 of the cabinet draft. I myself have again taken a peek. I yesterday questioned the minister in committee. He disputed all of these problems which I listed here, designated the criticism – by analogy – as disinformation. 

            Konrad Körner (CDU/CSU): You too! 

            Johannes Schätzel (SPD): You too!

Herr Minister, here is the last opportunity to set it right. 

I expect here and today a clear statement of the Federal government. Take back this cabinet draft! Or do you adhere to seizures and house search even without a judicial decree? Yes or no? It cannot be so difficult to here clearly declare. 

Regardless of how the Digital Ministry positions itself, the AfD remains now and in the future the advocate for freedom. 

            Bettina Hagedorn (SPD): Hahaha!

You can be sure of it. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

Markus Frohnmaier, December 19, 2025, U.S. National Security Strategy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/51, pp. 6139-6140. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The foreign policy spokesman of the CDU, Jürgen Hardt, lost himself [verstieg sich] in a remarkable analysis of the new National Security Strategy of the United States. He called it – and I cite: “AfD nonsense”, which somehow found access into American strategy. You hear correctly: In the bizarre, imaginary world of the Union, the AfD is no longer only remote-controlled from Moscow. No, now we even guide the pen of U.S. President Donald Trump for his National Security Strategy. We are the auto-pen, when wanted. 

Who looks away from CDU propaganda to reality nevertheless quickly recognizes: Godfather of the strategy was not the AfD, but healthy human understanding. 

            Boris Mijatović (Greens): Nice that you confirm the distinction.

In the introduction, it says – Listen: “The purpose of foreign policy is the protection of the core national interests; that is the sole focus of this strategy” [*https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf, 1]. A sentence like a rock, a sentence for the ages! And now compare this sentence for once with the expressions of Foreign Minister Wadephul this week, who justified the flying in of Afghans at taxpayers expense. Wadephul said, I cite: “I see in each refugee a creature of God.” 

            Peter Beyer (CSU/CSU): Do you see it differently?

Herein appears the fundamental rupture. The U.S.A. makes an interests-guided Realpolitik, the Federal government continues to make a values-guided, feelings policy. Only the flavor has been shifted a bit. Under the Green Baerbock, the foreign policy was feminist, under the Christian Democrat Wadephul, it is now pastoral. Church day sayings are Wadephul’s foreign policy offering. That is no policy change, and that is no “left is past”. That is old wine in new bottles. 

Donald Trump said what the German foreign policy for decades sought to deny: States have no friends, states also have no values, at least not in foreign policy. States have interests. And who believes foreign policy is a study circle for values friendships, he errs not only like the Union, but treads underfoot our German interests. 

            Deborah Düring (Greens): Which interests do you then represent?

The misfortune of values-guided foreign policy is chronic double-morality and impotence. Frau Baerbock was so feminist that she fed the Islamist regime of al-Julani in Syria with millions of euros of German tax money. In thanks, the latter refused to shake her hand and ordered the massacre of minorities. A truly great moment in feminist diplomacy. 

Wadephul prates: “Each refugee is a creature of God.” Yet does he overtake every refugee on this planet to Germany? Naturally not, even if the Union would perhaps gladly do it. Such statements are thus cheap courage free of cost. Out of the mouth of a German foreign minister, they are a declaration of political bankruptcy. At the end of the day, you sell to the population values promises which in the hard reality are not to be kept, and which, with permission, in the migration policy also should not be kept. 

How refreshingly clear on the other hand is the U.S. American strategy. Cite: 

            “We want full control over our borders, over our immigration system,                                        and over transportation networks through which people come to our                                                          country – legally and illegally.”[*, 3]

Why exists no German paper which expresses this self-evident thing, why does there exist no German paper which clearly says this? A glance at the government bench here delivers the answer: This government has no strategy, this government is incapable of strategy. 

It is revealing there is just one, single area in which the CDU/CSU is suddenly not at all interested in political values. Cite from the U.S. Strategy: 

            “The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and                      other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty,               migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife,                                                   censorship of free speech, and” 

– listen well, dear colleagues of the Union –

             “suppression of political opposition, cratering of birthrates, and loss of national                                      identities and self-confidence.” [*, 25] 

End citation from the U.S. Security Strategy.

Ja, ladies and gentlemen, your anti-democratic, even wicked machinations do not remain hidden on that side of the Atlantic. A wrong word on the net? House search! Criticism of migration? A case for the Constitution Defense! Engagement in an association? Only with the correct party book! Election success of the opposition? Verbieten! – that is your policy. You have changed Germany into a attitude-state, into a woke, open-air prison. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD):  Rubbish!

And when the U.S.A. holds up the mirror to you, you react with whining and are outraged. That is the hideous reality which you yourselves have created. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): You don’t believe that yourself! You yourself                                need to laugh!

In that regard, it would nevertheless be so simple. The Americans write, cite: 

            “America [Die Vereinigten Staaten] is, understandably, sentimentally [emotional]                                        attached to the European continent” [*, 26] 

Naturally, since it is ultimately so that descendents of Europeans have settled the American continent. Therefore: Who so acts as to estrange America from Europe, who estranges the growing child from the parents, he lies. America does not estrange itself. Yet America has no  desire for parents who have given up. America has no interest in European and German self-abnegation. Unlike you, the U.S.A. wants no Europe, no Germany, which degenerates into an authoritarian, Islamized Moloch, incapable of alliance. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Such rubbish!

What Washington demands is nothing new. It is something which my party, the AfD, demands for many years in this house. Dear colleagues, finally end the course of civilizational self-abnegation. The U.S. strategy is no affront, the U.S. strategy is a blueprint. We require no priggish church day sayings, 

            Boris Mijatović (Greens): Were you ever at a church day, Herr Frohnmaier? 

we require a return to Realpolitik, 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Where actually is your delegation? 

we require a Politik which our border, our sovereignty, 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Not ten people are there! 

and our identity defends without compromise. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Where are the people? 

Ladies and gentlemen – and to the hecklers in this place – I can only simply say again to you: Listen for once! Then perhaps even your Politik finally becomes better. You would thereby render to the citizens in Germany at Christmas a great service; since the citizens in Germany have a nose full of the bad Politik of the old parties. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Weak speech!

 

[trans: tem] 

[*https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf]