Experts who are invited to provide their expertise in hearings at the German Bundestag should be free to respond as corresponds to their individual conscience. This should explicitly include the freedom to withhold their expertise to questions that are posed by parties that do not align with democratic principles. Together with others, we have initiated an open letter in response to a clause that was added to expert invitations that insinuated an obligation to respond to all questions.
Expertise cannot claim to be neutral when human dignity is at stake.
We have sent the letter to the relevant individuals at the Committees (please note that we got further expressions of support after the deadline from Henritte Litta, Matthias Spielkamp and Torsten Wetzling, bringing the total to 31 experts from Bundestag hearings). Further reporting by netzpolitik.org explains how the AfD tried to defame Aline in a Bundestag hearing where she was invited to provide expertise on the German implementation of the Data Governance Act. The full hearing and her expert statement are available online.
Expertise cannot claim to be neutral when human dignity is at stake. We describe our perspective in guest articles at netzpolitik.org on why also digital policy needs to be part of a firewall against the AfD (Digitalpolitik muss Teil der Brandmauer sein) and why antifascist digital policy needs to be anticapitalist (Antifaschistische Netzpolitik muss antikapitalistisch sein). Aline demonstrated this in practice when invited to another expert hearing in which she responded to a question by the AfD: “I do not respond to questions from the AfD. I do not provide my expertise to a party that attacks human dignity.”