German justice ministers and UN rapporteur call for tighter self-identification law

Since 1 November 2024, any German aged fourteen or over has been able to change their legal sex registration and first name with a simple declaration at the civil registry office — without an expert assessment, waiting period or judicial review. Two years later, the law itself, the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz (SBGG), is under scrutiny: the federal states want to tighten it, and a UN rapporteur says it does not adequately protect women.

What the justice ministers are calling for

At their spring conference in Hamburg in June 2026, the justice ministers of Germany’s federal states called on the federal government to make the SBGG stricter. Their concern: in their view, the law provides too few safeguards against abuse of the simplified procedure. The law itself provided for an evaluation to be completed by the end of July 2026 — a deadline the states used to put their criticism on the agenda.

The UN rapporteur: protection is lacking

Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, went a step further in her response. According to her, the SBGG lacks the "protective measures" needed to prevent abuse by sex offenders and other perpetrators of violence. Her reasoning: a system that allows a change of legal sex based on a single declaration, without any form of review, provides no barrier against people who wish to misuse the procedure — for example, to gain access to spaces specifically intended for women.

Supporters and opponents within Germany itself

What is striking about the German debate is that the criticism does not come only from the conservative side. Among those pointing to the risk of abuse and calling for additional safeguards are outspoken feminists, lesbian advocacy organisations and criminal law experts — and, according to some reports, also trans people who themselves believe that a purely self-declaration-based system is vulnerable to abuse by others. Supporters of the law counter that none of the sixteen countries that have introduced a comparable self-identification law since 2012 has shown structural problems with abuse. Germany’s Federal Ministry of Justice and various advocacy organisations have therefore expressly rejected the UN rapporteur’s criticism.

What is concretely on the table now

The federal states have not submitted a ready-made bill, but are asking the federal government to consider additional safeguards as part of the evaluation: for example, a waiting period between the application and the final change, or some form of review in cases involving clear signs of abuse — without reverting to the old, more burdensome procedure requiring a mandatory expert assessment, which the SBGG specifically replaced. The federal government has not yet said whether it will amend the law, or how. In the meantime, the law has also become the subject of a political battle: the AfD wants to repeal it, while the CDU is discussing tightening it.

Why this is also relevant to the Netherlands

The Dutch Transgender Act has operated with a lighter procedure than before since 2014, but retained the requirement for an expert’s declaration — precisely the element that Germany abolished entirely in 2024. The bill to move to pure self-identification in the Netherlands as well was withdrawn by the government in 2025; the legal dossier on the matter is available at zelfidentificatie.nl. trans-nederland.nl describes how the political debate unfolded between 2020 and 2025. Germany’s experience — becoming the subject of criticism from both its own federal states and a UN rapporteur just two years after its introduction — provides a concrete example for the Dutch debate of how a self-identification system without review can come under pressure in practice, regardless of whether any actual abuse has taken place.