Legislation transparent: Mediation Committee follows the example of FragDenStaat

If federal draft laws encroach on the competence of the states, they have veto power. The federal and state governments do not agree on important legislative proposals, such as the recent relief bonus of 1,000 eurosthey can meet in the joint committee in which the Bundestag and Bundesrat are equally represented. Whether citizen’s money or renewable energy lawsthe failure of large and controversial legislative packages has often been prevented.

It was all the more problematic that for a long time no other part of the democratic legislative process was as opaque as the negotiations in the Mediation Committee: What happens in the negotiations is not discussed publicly again in the Bundestag. Hardly anyone knows exactly how the results come about other than the 16 people involved. Proposals for agreement from the Mediation Committee can no longer be negotiated or changed in the later proceedings, but can only be accepted or rejected as a whole.

Light in the dark room of legislation

However, minutes are generally kept during the negotiations. In 2023, FragDenStaat published all 177 minutes of all mediation committees between the Federal Council and the Bundestag from 1995 to 2017 for the first timewhich we obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The approximately 8,000 pages make it clear how important laws came about in Germany.
Among other things, the documents provide an insight into the negotiations surrounding the so-called Hartz laws and the “Agenda 2010” in 2002 and 2003. They trace how the federal and state representatives at the time agreed to further tighten the already restrictive Hartz laws and to delete social programs.

And our efforts have obviously made an impression – even if it took three years: The Mediation Committee is now publishing at least the meeting minutes of the penultimate electoral term itself. This means that all minutes of the 19th electoral term are now publicly available on the Mediation Committee’s website. They include, for example, negotiations from 2019 on the “Law to Conduct a Census in 2021” or the “Law for the implementation of the 2030 climate protection program in tax lawBut also the meetings from the Corona years 2020 and 2021, such as the “All-Day Funding Act“It is also understandable how the federal and state governments have agreed on new regulations for inventory data information – i.e. the legal framework that enables security authorities to receive data from telecommunications companiesafter the Federal Constitutional Court declared the previous regulation unconstitutional in 2020. And the minutes show again and again: the lines of conflict often do not run as usual between different parties, but between federal and state interests.

Insight into these negotiation processes is important: Thanks to the protocols, political processes become more understandable and this strengthens trust and democracy. The fact that the minutes of the Mediation Committee are now publicly accessible is also a success of our persistent transparency work.

We have published the minutes of the Mediation Committee as part of the “FragDenStaat Library”. She is from Arcadia, the charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwinpromoted.

→to the protocols from 1995 to 2017

→ to the minutes of the 19th electoral term on the Mediation Committee website

→to the request from 2021