Rumour goes that too many high ranking fraudulent CDU-politicians were exposed with this (Philipp Amthor and Jens Spahn for example).

Recently there was a days long blackout in the middle of winter in Berlin due to a left-extremist attack on power line infrastructure [1]. This was mainly because all those critical infrastructure information is publicly accessible. I can imagine the goal is to prevent such critical information being publicly available in the future.

Also, there was big scandal from then health minister of Germany [2] and the information came out through various media out lets. I can imagine the politicians wants to prevent that happening in the future as well, so the corruption would go undetected (this is just my opinion)

[1]- https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-how-dangerous-are-left... [2] - https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-german-govt-suffers-defeat-in...

Retaliation for exposing major character flaws of the chancellor’s cabinet and potentially corruptness of major CDU (Christian Democratic Union) figures close to the chancellor seems a plausible answer.

FoIA requests humiliated half of the chancellor’s cabinet this year, including the chancellor himself.

The agricultural minister (CSU)(CDUs sister party) was especially proud of his nickname "the black butcher".

Someone sent a request inquiring about the hygiene protocols of his butchers shop via FoIA and he rather closed shop to deny access to the protocols than hand them out. This is now in front of a court and the media made fun of him for being the black butcher without a butchery.

Digital Minister (CDU) went on TV and proudly announced no more fax machines in his ministry.

Someone sent his undersecretary a fax the same day with the title "Jäger des verlorenen Faxes" which translates into "hunter of the lost fax" and is a Hommage to the German Indiana Jones raiders of the last ark movie title.

Two weeks later the minister sat in an interview and said he needed to correct himself. If he sees another fax machine in his ministry it’s going to get thrown out.

There was a huge conference that is run annually by a company the culture minister (CDU) is controlling that allowed access to major German political figures including private talks, including the minister of economy (CDU), for a fixed price.

It was only uncovered by a FoIA request. It was so bad the Bavarian prime minister had to pull any funding and recommendations to the conference and had to stay away from it after going there for years.

Just this week the mayor of Berlin (CDU) had to give up his spot as top candidate in the upcoming mayoral race because he lied to the press and even lied repeatedly about phoning with the chancellor during the major attack on the energy infrastructure in Berlin by allegedly left-wing extremists.

A FoIA request busted the lying mayor as well as the lying chancellor, whose ministry couldn’t provide any proof they telephoned at all at the time they both said they had phoned, when a court asked them to deliver proof to the court.

This is only on the federal level, in a single year.

IFG/FoIA busted tons of lying and cheating local politicians over the years. Of course, the party that is involved in most of the heavy cases does want this law to die or be completely ineffective.

It’s very annoying for the chancellor that normal people have the right to inform themselves by whom and how decisions were made as soon as public money is involved.

But he’s also calling every German citizen lazy and cheating with sick days, etc., so I’d say the German people have a huge reason to distrust this cabinet and use the IFG/FoIA as the small man’s nuclear bomb, and the cabinet really doesn’t like that the peasants can fight back with the most annoying weapon in their arsenal, counter-bureaucracy.