Overview
- Union and SPD finalized a roughly 100‑page amendment that keeps core expansions and will be voted on in the Bundestag this Friday, with the government saying the changes respond to new hybrid and terror threats.
- The bill lets the foreign intelligence service, the BND, enter private residences in Germany for certain secret operations and adds a prior review by the Unabhängiger Kontrollrat that experts say will likely be too weak to stop misuse.
- The domestic agency, the BfV, would gain authority to surveil organized‑crime networks such as biker gangs or mafia cells when there are indications they support extremist or anti‑constitutional activity.
- Oversight is being concentrated in the Unabhängiger Kontrollrat while the G10‑Commission would be eliminated and the federal data protection officer would lose supervisory powers, and the text strengthens protections for some medical professions while loosening limits on surveilling journalists and lawyers.
- Political fallout is already visible: the Greens plan to split their vote by backing BND changes but opposing BfV measures, and legal experts and civil‑society groups expect challenges at the Federal Constitutional Court that could delay or overturn parts of the law.