This seems to be the latest attempt of the conservative CDU to further reduce transparency and accountability of government officials. One could posit the goal is to enable corruption without all that hassle of the media potentially finding out about it.

I'm not really sure I buy the alarm on restricting FoI requests to German citizens and EU citizens in Germany.

Should a random US citizen be able to ask a random Germany government official for data? Why?

Same thing happened in Romania.

The previous president was burning tens of million of Euros on renting private jets on the taxpayer's dime for trips that weren't related to his duties, and when reporters wanted to investigate this misuse, the government came forward and called the president's travel history (and expenses) a national security topic and remove it from the freedom of information.

Isn't it convenient how you can just cover corruption under the rug by invoking national security? I'm surprised it hasn't been used more often.

Worth noting that this is a push from the CDU who are leading the government, but their coalition partner the SPD has already come out pretty strongly against this, so it's rather unclear if this would ever actually go through (not to mention challenges from constitutional courts). The CDU cannot unilaterally push through legislation without the SPD.

The SPD has rolled over for the CDU in the past on things, but they've also blocked things they thought were important enough to block, so it's really anyone's guess if this go through (I personally wouldn't bet on it, but I'm sure a bunch of dour pessimists will come explain to me that it's a foregone conclusion and I'm naive).

Germany is forgetting history already.

What incidents are driving such a change?

I don't think this would pass at all, the German parliament is now in summer break and once they're back there would be 3 federal state elections and depending on its outcome, the current government could collapse before the end of this year.