Germany news: Bundestag to discuss opt-out organ donation

The Bundestag will discuss two separate cross-party proposals on Thursday to increase the number of human organs donated for often life-saving transplant operations.

One proposal upholds Germany's current system, under which people who wish to donate organs must actively give permission.

Advocates of the proposal say that the shortfall of donated organs can be remedied by campaigns calling on adults to take part and making it easier to register the desire to donate.

The other proposal calls for an opt-out scheme under which organs can be removed postmortem from anyone who has not expressly rejected being an organ donor.

Backers of this proposal say that although surveys show that most people in Germany are willing to donate their organs, very few actually document this wish.

They also cite statistics showing that countries with opt-out schemes have more donations, with Germany lagging behind in international comparisons.

Altogether 254 of the 630 members of the Bundestag have signed on to the opt-out scheme, and 58 have backed the first proposal to maintain the current national system.

The Bundestag last voted on the issue in 2020, with a majority supporting the opt-in model, even though an opt-out proposal had more signees then, too.

France, Spain and the Netherlands are examples of European countries that have opt-out models in place.

The DW newsroom in Bonn says guten Tag and willkommen to its readers around the world!

You join our coverage as the German parliament is set to revisit a debate on organ donations: Should an opt-out scheme replace the current opt-in one in view of the dwindling supply?

Parliamentarians will also be looking at goverment proposals to give more powers to the country's intelligence agencies to enable them to cope with the current myriad of security threats.

And the university in Münster is to open a faculty of Islamic theology — the first in the country — that will have an equal status with the Catholic and Protestant faculties there. 

All this comes amid a bit of good news for the German economy, which experts say will grow twice as much this year as previously forecast.

Read on for more on these and other stories.