Description
abgeordnetenwatch.de is a German website where anyone can put a question to a member of parliament in public and read the answer. It also shows how each member voted in important roll-call votes and what side income they have declared.
The site is run by Parlamentwatch e.V., a Hamburg association. Gregor Hackmack and Boris Hekele started it as a volunteer project in 2004, first for the Hamburg parliament, then from December 2006 for the Bundestag. It now covers 18 parliaments: the Bundestag, the 16 Landtage and the German members of the European Parliament, plus the candidates before each election. It lives on donations: in December 2025 more than 13,300 people gave regularly, from €5 a month. Its annual reports are online back to 2007, and it lists its own meetings with politicians.
A moderation team reads every question before it goes online. Insults, questions about private life and plain statements of opinion are not published, and the asker’s surname is shown only as an initial. By the site’s own count, about 80 % of the more than 250,000 questions it has received were answered. Standard replies, where an office says it won’t answer on the site, are marked as such and not counted.
Asking costs nothing and needs only a name and an e-mail address. Ministers who don’t sit in a parliament can’t be asked.
Strengths
- Questions and answers stay public, so anyone can read and compare what a politician replied, years later.
- Each member’s profile puts their votes in roll-call votes and their declared side income next to their answers.
- Funded by more than 13,300 regular donors, with annual reports published since 2007.
Weaknesses
- Politicians may ignore questions or send a standard reply, and some members of parliament have boycotted the site.
- Only German parliaments and German MEPs are covered; local councils and ministers without a seat are not.
- In German only, and a question should be no longer than 200 characters, plus a short justification.
Who it is for
Voters in Germany who want a public answer from their member of parliament or from a candidate before an election, or who want to check how their representative voted.
Sources
- abgeordnetenwatch.de: Finanzierung, FAQ, Moderations-Codex, Politische Kontakte, checked November 2026
- Wikipedia: Abgeordnetenwatch.de