After the collapse of the traffic light coalition on Wednesday evening, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wants to continue the red-green minority government until mid-January 2025 in order to get some more legislative proposals through parliament. It also influences a large number of digital policy projects, including some implementations for European directives and related legislation.
Advertisement
Without the government’s own majority, projects may fail in Parliament. If they are abandoned until new elections, they expire and must be restarted in the next legislative period. Furthermore, it is currently completely unclear how much time the federal government has left as opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) is already pushing for new elections.
Serious legislation is still theoretically possible
Among other things, legislation on critical infrastructure is currently open: on the one hand, the NIS2 implementation law to strengthen cybersecurity, which is already being discussed in Parliament, and, on the other hand, improved physical security of critical systems. The implementation law for security, which was introduced by the cabinet only on Wednesday afternoon. States also pushing for early adoption are currently largely led by Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists. At the moment it is uncertain whether the Bundestag group will be affected by this or not.
The German implementation of the European AI Regulation (AI Act) is also affected. It should, inter alia, establish the Federal Network Agency as the main responsible supervisory authority. There is a double problem here: On the one hand, the German affiliate legislation has not yet been finalized, and on the other hand, there are no positions planned for this in the Federal Network Agency. These will only be set in the next federal budget – but that won’t come.
Legislation implementing the revised European eIDAS regulation, which, among other things, is intended to introduce into German law the requirements for wallet solutions that can be used throughout the EU, has not yet passed the Cabinet. Health sector projects are also unclear: for example, legislation to transform Gematic into a health digital agency is still under discussion in parliament.
Quick freeze, hacker paragraph about to end
FDP’s Quick Freeze project, intended as an alternative to suspended data retention, has little chance of being implemented. There will be no possibility of new rules being implemented for intelligence services. It is unclear whether a so-called security package might come with it, which should allow the BKA and the federal police to carry out complex data analysis and biometric comparison of facial and voice data with publicly available data. The union could not make much progress on the project and blocked it in the Federal Council.
A recently launched initiative to decriminalize IT security research, the reform of the so-called hacker paragraph, is not given high enough priority to complete. Legislation on employee data protection probably has no chance now – it hasn’t even been included in the cabinet yet. Neither the Union nor the FDP will be willing to cooperate here.
There are also a number of laws that are not primarily related to digital policy, but are primarily meant to improve the digitalization of processes. These include several projects in the field of judicial and administrative digitalization, such as the digitalization of real estate contracts or construction contract law.
Other projects will also run into problems due to the missing federal budget for 2025, which will no longer pass due to the failure of the coalition. This means that the Federal Network Agency’s actually planned tools to oversee the Digital Services Coordinator will not be in place as planned.
Initial housekeeping is expected for months
Furthermore, without an approved budget, the principle of provisional budget management applies: the federal government is allowed to make only expenditures that are clearly necessary. This applies not only to projects that rely on federal funding – including research projects, but also to other initiatives, including funding for broadband expansion. The remaining federal government, composed of the SPD, the Greens and Volker Vissing, must now examine the specific effects.
It is also considered unlikely that the next federal budget will be passed immediately after the next election: before then, there are still – predictably complex – exploratory and coalition negotiations that could last for months into 2025 and, thus, Scholz’s current As planned, beginning of summer.
On Wednesday evening, Scholz ousted Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) and announced he would seek a vote of confidence in mid-January 2025. This would likely lead to new elections in the spring. Subsequently, FDP ministers Marco Buschmann (Justice) and Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Research) announced their resignations. Digital Minister Volker Vissing surprisingly announced his departure from the FDP on Thursday morning and intends to remain in post.
(vbr)
