Germany may soon tighten its grip on digital speech even further, as internal documents obtained by BILD from the ongoing coalition talks between the center-right CDU (led by Friedrich Merz) and the center-left SPD (headed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz) point to an unsettling agenda: expanding the state’s authority to police so-called “disinformation.”
Behind closed doors, the prospective coalition appears to be crafting policies that would significantly broaden state influence over what can and cannot be said online — particularly on social media platforms. These proposals, originating from the coalition’s “Culture and Media” working group, show a clear intent to escalate pressure on platforms like X and intensify efforts to suppress content labeled as “fake news.”
The push is rooted in the belief, echoed in the coalition’s exploratory paper, that “disinformation and fake news” pose a danger to democracy. But the negotiating paper goes even further, declaring: “The deliberate dissemination of false factual allegations is not covered by freedom of expression.” This phrase, quoted by BILD, lays the groundwork for potentially sweeping restrictions on speech, raising serious alarms among legal experts and free speech advocates.
The document argues that a supposedly independent media regulatory body must be empowered to crack down on so-called “information manipulation,” as well as “hatred and incitement” — all under the vague condition that it adheres to “clear legal requirements.” But when the government or its proxies begin defining what qualifies as misinformation, the door swings wide open for politically motivated censorship.
Many will see this as a dangerous step toward criminalizing dissent. Legal scholar Volker Boehme-Neßler of the University of Oldenburg told BILD, “Lies are only prohibited if they are punishable, for example in the case of incitement to hatred. Otherwise, you can lie.” He also stressed that the boundary between fact and opinion is often blurry and contested: “It is not a simple question of what is a statement of fact and what is an expression of opinion. In most cases, courts interpret freedom of expression very broadly.”
The move mirrors broader concerns raised internationally. US Vice President JD Vance previously slammed Germany’s trajectory on both mass migration and censorship, warning that Berlin’s crackdown on dissent risks becoming self-destructive.
With political speech increasingly vulnerable to arbitrary classification as misinformation, critics worry that these new policies represent not a defense of democracy, but an erosion of one of its most fundamental pillars: the right to free and open debate.