The AfD denies it passes information from the system to Russia or China. “We do not comment on baseless allegations,” a spokesperson for the AfD’s parliamentary group said in response to a request for comment.
A leaky system
Unlike in other national parliaments, all MPs and their aides in Germany’s Bundestag have access to EuDoX, a databank containing thousands of EU files ranging from ministerial summit briefing notes to summaries of confidential meetings among ambassadors. The system was set up as a safeguard against unchecked executive power, a particular concern in Germany given its Nazi past.
The documents — around 25,000 per year — are put into the system by a special unit within the Bundestag that gets them from the government. The databank contains “restricted” documents, the lowest classification of confidential information.
“In principle, this [access] is absolutely right and necessary in order to fulfill our task … to monitor the federal government, and since a great deal of this takes place at the EU level, it is, as I said, necessary,” the Greens’ Hofreiter said.
Experts also noted that the government is well aware that a large number of people have access to the system and that this creates the possibility of leaks.
“Considering that EuDoX is a relatively open platform with 5,000 authorized users, there is nothing particularly sensitive in it. The federal government knows exactly what it is feeding into it,” said law professor Sven Hölscheidt from the Free University Berlin, who has studied the databank.