Germany

General overview

The area of freedom of expression presents a large number of events and reveals a sharp tension between institutional setbacks and civil resistance. The setbacks on record respond to different logics: the repression of pro-Palestinian protest, the criminalization of climate activism, and the dispute surrounding the far-right magazine Compact. The acts of resistance, for their part, express the vitality of broad sectors of civil society in the face of the AfD’s advances and the tightening of migration policies.

Criminalization of climate activism

In June 2024, the Flensburg Public Prosecutor’s Office filed charges against Miriam Meyer, an activist with the climate justice group Letzte Generation (“Last Generation”), accusing her of participating in a criminal organization under Article 129 of the German Criminal Code. The indictment identified her as an organizer of actions targeting critical transport and supply infrastructure. This case is part of a broader pattern of criminalization and judicialization of climate activism in Germany, which applies criminal statutes designed to prosecute organized crime to individuals carrying out non-violent acts of civil disobedience.

Repression of pro-Palestinian protest

The period saw an escalation in the repression of pro-Palestinian voices. In July 2024, more than two dozen protesters were arrested during a police operation in Berlin, which Amnesty International described as brutal and disproportionate against peaceful demonstrators. In September 2024, authorities banned the association Palestinian Solidarity Duisburg, alleging its alleged support for Hamas, and raided the homes of its members, seizing documents and electronic devices. The ban on this association illustrates a pattern: the application of anti-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation to civil society organizations expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, in a context where the debate over the limits of permissible speech regarding the conflict in Gaza is extremely sensitive in Germany for historical reasons.

Questioning civil society organizations

In March 2025, the CDU demanded in parliament information on the “political neutrality” of civil society organizations that had participated in demonstrations against the tightening of asylum policy. The maneuver sought to use institutional oversight mechanisms to pressure organizations critical of the government and the AfD. In response to this offensive, more than 2,000 academics signed a public letter defending the role of civil organizations in democracy, underscoring their function in promoting and defending human rights and fighting right-wing extremism.

Resistance: mobilization against the AfD and for migrants’ rights

The period also recorded significant acts of resistance in the realm of freedom of expression. In January 2025, 15,000 people gathered in Riesa — where the AfD was holding its national congress — to demonstrate their rejection of the far-right party. Police intervention resulted in the detention of protesters and left a member of the Saxon state parliament for the Left party Die Linke injured. That same month and in February, tens of thousands of people protested in Berlin and other cities across the country against plans to restrict immigration backed by the conservatives with AfD support, in what constituted one of the largest mobilizations of the period.

General overview

The area of sexual and reproductive rights presents substantive events of a favorable nature: the abortion reform recommendation drawn up by the Commission on Reproductive Self-Determination (April 2024), the de-pathologization involved in the recognition of trans identities (October 2024), and the passage of the Violence Assistance Act (February 2025). These milestones coexist with legislative inaction on abortion reform, which remains unresolved. The resulting balance is complex: concrete normative advances on gender-based violence and gender identity stand in contrast with the persistence of an abortion legal framework considered anachronistic in the European context.

Recommendation for abortion reform

In April 2024, the German government made public the conclusions of the Commission on Reproductive Self-Determination and Reproductive Medicine, a body created with the mandate of evaluating the country’s abortion regulations and formulating recommendations for their modernization. The Commission concluded that the existing regulations did not meet international human rights standards or public health guidelines, and that they were out of step with common practice across Europe. Within the MIDA framework, this conclusion is recorded as a defense: it does not entail an immediate normative change, but it does constitute an institutional action aimed at strengthening already recognized rights and laying the groundwork for their reform.

Tensions in Parliament: the recommendation is not law

In February 2025, despite the recommendations of the expert Commission, the Bundestag’s Legal Affairs Committee decided not to advance any proposal to reform abortion legislation. Abortion remains legal in Germany, but the Criminal Code still classifies it as a crime, specifying that in certain cases it will not be punishable — a legal contradiction that, according to the main reproductive rights organizations, perpetuates stigma and affects effective access to the right. Within the MIDA framework, this event is recorded as continuity: it does not entail a regressive modification of the normative framework, but it does represent the forfeiture of a concrete opportunity for progress.

New gender identity law

In October 2024, Germany brought into force new legislation allowing individuals over the age of 18 to change their name and gender marker in official records through an administrative procedure, without the need for psychiatric evaluations or judicial hearings — requirements that had been criticized for decades by human rights organizations and the trans community. Minors between the ages of 14 and 18 may access this right with parental approval or through legal recourse. This reform represents a concrete and significant step forward, running counter to the policies adopted during the same period of analysis by countries such as the United States under the Trump administration.

Violence Assistance Act

On February 14, 2025, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat — Germany’s constitutional body representing the 16 federal states, acting as the upper chamber in the legislative process — passed the Violence Assistance Act (Gewalthilfegesetz), which entered into force on February 28, 2025. This measure is unprecedented in nature: it establishes a nationwide right to protection and assistance for women affected by violence. The law obliges both federal and state governments to guarantee a comprehensive, needs-based support system: women’s shelters and specialized counseling centers are now co-funded by the federal government, an obligation that had not previously existed in law. This advance is especially significant in the regional context: while in other countries monitored by MIDA protection against gender-based violence is under attack or being defunded, Germany formalizes and reinforces by law the right to assistance. Its passage by both chambers — and with the support of the new CDU/CSU–SPD coalition — indicates that it represents a broad political consensus, not a measure of the outgoing government.

General overview

The area of labor rights shows an unfavorable balance concentrated in the early months of the new CDU/CSU–SPD coalition government, which took office following the February 2025 elections. The two measures recorded during this period are threats — not effective setbacks — in the MIDA sense: policy announcements and intentions that have not yet materialized into definitive normative changes, but which point in a concerning direction.

Repeal of the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act

In April 2025, the parties of the new governing coalition — CDU/CSU and SPD — announced their intention to repeal the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG), which obligated German companies to ensure respect for human and labor rights throughout their global production chains. The measure was justified as part of an initiative to reduce administrative burdens. According to the coalition agreement, the LkSG would be replaced by a simplified implementation of the European Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), without reporting obligations and with enforcement suspended except in cases of serious violations. This decision represents a setback in the international projection of German labor standards, with potential consequences for workers in supply chains in countries of the Global South.

Flexibilization of working hours

In May 2025, the governing coalition declared its intention to replace the maximum daily working hour limit — currently set at eight hours, with a maximum of ten in exceptional cases — with a weekly limit. Although the coalition agreement does not provide precise details on the new framework, the measure would open the possibility of shifts of more than twelve hours on individual days. The minimum rest period of eleven hours between shifts would remain mandatory. Trade union organizations noted that this flexibilization would disproportionately affect workers with less bargaining power, who are most dependent on legal limits to protect their working conditions.

General overview

Around this set of rights, the political dynamics of the German case during this period are particularly clear: the setbacks in migrants’ rights and the rise of racist and xenophobic positions are not the product of a far-right government, but of the pressure the AfD exerts on traditional parties, which have progressively adopted a more restrictive migration agenda as a strategy to win back votes from the far right.

Tightening of migration controls

In September 2024, the “traffic light” coalition government announced plans to introduce stricter controls at all border crossings, extending a policy that had already been in effect since October 2023. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser justified the measure on the need to “further reduce irregular migration,” adopting language and an agenda that only a few years earlier had been the exclusive preserve of far-right political positions. This measure, adopted by a center-to-center-left government, is a telling indicator of the shift in German political debate on migration.

In August 2024, Germany carried out its first deportation to Afghanistan since the Taliban took power in August 2021. A flight carrying 28 Afghan nationals — described by the government as “convicted criminals” — departed from Leipzig/Halle airport. Human rights organizations criticized the measure, noting that Afghanistan under the Taliban regime does not meet the minimum safety conditions required to receive deportees. In September of that same year, the government also proposed deportations to Rwanda — following the model of the plan abandoned by the United Kingdom — as a mechanism for managing irregular migration flows.

In January 2025, the Bundestag passed a motion for stricter migration policy. The vote on this motion is particularly significant for understanding the political moment: it was the first joint vote between the CDU and the far-right AfD. The measure passed contemplates permanent border controls, the rejection of all irregular asylum applications, and greater facilitation of deportations. The measure sparked intense debate over whether the CDU had “broken the cordon sanitaire” separating mainstream parties from the far right.

Resistance and new threats

In response to this shift, civil society responded with notably large-scale mobilizations. In January 2025, tens of thousands of people protested in Berlin — and in other cities across the country — against plans to restrict immigration proposed by the conservatives with AfD support. That same month, 15,000 people blocked access to the AfD’s national congress in Riesa. These demonstrations constituted one of the broadest expressions of rejection of the political debate’s shift toward anti-migrant positions, and are an indicator of the democratic vitality sustaining civil society’s counterweight to the far right’s advance.

In April 2025, Berlin’s migration authorities moved forward with deportation proceedings against four young foreign residents on account of their participation in solidarity protests with Gaza. These proceedings, still ongoing, would — if confirmed — set a grave precedent. The exercise of the right to protest could have direct consequences on the migration status of foreign nationals, linking political repression with the violation of migrants’ rights.