Germany is the largest member state of the European Union. It has 83 million residents, 600 family courts (Familiengerichte), and roughly 150,000 custody-related proceedings per year. It cannot tell you how often those courts follow the recommendations of its Youth Welfare Offices (Jugendämter). It cannot tell you whether non-German parents obtain custody at different rates than German nationals. It cannot tell you how many children live primarily with their fathers after separation, or with their mothers, or in shared arrangements.
It refuses to collect the data.
France — a comparable EU member state with a comparable legal tradition — publishes all of this. Routinely. Through its Ministry of Justice, its national statistics institute, and its demographic research body. The data is downloadable, citable, and auditable.
This article maps the gap, explains why it matters, and introduces a new European Parliament petition demanding that Germany finally count what it has been hiding.
I. The Data Gap: Germany vs. France
To understand the scale of Germany's statistical blackout, it helps to compare it directly with France across four categories of custody data that any functioning family-law system should be able to produce.
| Data Category | Germany | France |
|---|---|---|
| Custody outcomes by parent gender | PARTIAL — Only §1671 BGB applications tracked by Destatis; no breakdown of outcomes by gender in the full range of proceedings | PUBLISHED — Ministry of Justice (Ministère de la Justice) publishes via Guillonneau & Moreau studies; gender-disaggregated data available since 2003 |
| Custody outcomes by parent nationality | NOT PUBLISHED — No federal statistics disaggregate custody by nationality of either parent | PARTIAL — Brussels II ter Central Authority tracking captures cross-border cases; domestic data partially available through ministerial reports |
| Court alignment with Jugendamt recommendations | NOT PUBLISHED — The Jugendamt participates in virtually every contested custody proceeding; no data exists on how often courts follow its recommendation | N/A BY DESIGN — France has no equivalent body with a comparable procedural role |
| Post-separation residency arrangements | NOT PUBLISHED — No federal tracking of where children actually live after parental separation | PUBLISHED — INSEE tracks via tax returns (résidence alternée filings); Ministry of Justice tracks per judicial ruling |
The academic literature confirms this vacuum. Walper, Entleitner-Phleps, and Krüger, writing in a 2021 Springer Nature chapter, state plainly: "official statistics do not inform about post-separation parenting arrangements" in Germany. They rely instead on survey data — the AID:A and pairfam panels — which are useful for social science but wholly inadequate for policy accountability. Survey samples cannot tell you whether the family court in Stuttgart follows Jugendamt recommendations at a different rate than the court in Munich. Only administrative data can.
II. Why the Gap Matters
The absence of data is not a neutral condition. It is a policy choice with consequences.
Without outcome data disaggregated by nationality, it is impossible to prove that Germany's family courts treat non-German parents differently. But it is equally impossible to disprove it. The system operates in an evidentiary void of its own making.
That void was noted, in stark terms, by the European Parliament itself. On 29 November 2018, the Parliament adopted a resolution on the role of the German Jugendamt in cross-border family disputes. The vote was 307 in favour, 211 against — a substantial majority. The resolution recorded that the Parliament's Committee on Petitions (PETI) had received:
"a considerable and consistent number of petitions from non-German parents reporting serious systematic discrimination… on grounds directly linked to their nationality."
The word systematic carries weight in EU law. It implies a pattern, not isolated incidents. But a pattern, by definition, requires data to demonstrate. Germany's response to allegations of systematic discrimination has been, in effect, to ensure no data exists that could confirm or refute them.
This is not oversight. It is architecture.
III. What the European Parliament Demanded — and What Happened
The 2018 resolution did not merely express concern. It made specific demands. Paragraph 10 is unambiguous:
"[The European Parliament] strongly criticises the absence of detailed and consistent statistical data on family law proceedings involving the Jugendamt and before German family courts, for instance, statistics on rulings that did and did not comply with the Jugendamt recommendations, and notes that this data has been requested repeatedly over many years."
Three elements of this paragraph deserve emphasis. First, the Parliament called for data on court compliance with Jugendamt recommendations — the single most important metric for understanding the Jugendamt's actual power in custody proceedings. Second, it noted that this request had been made "repeatedly over many years," meaning Germany's failure to act was not new even in 2018. Third, the resolution passed by a wide margin, 307 to 211, giving it strong democratic legitimacy.
Eight years have now passed since that vote. Germany has published no new statistical series. Destatis (Statistisches Bundesamt) continues to publish its annual Fachserie 10, Reihe 2.2 on family court proceedings, which records the number of §1671 BGB applications (transfer of sole custody) but not the nationality of the applicants, not the recommendation of the Jugendamt, and not the actual living arrangements of the children post-ruling. The Federal Ministry of Justice (Bundesministerium der Justiz) has issued no directive requiring courts to collect this data. The Conference of Ministers of Justice (Justizministerkonferenz) has not placed it on its agenda.
The Parliament's demand was heard, noted, and ignored.
IV. The New Petition
A new petition to the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions (PETI) has been drafted to force the issue back onto the institutional agenda. The petition demands that Germany publish three categories of data:
- Court–Jugendamt alignment rate: The proportion of contested custody rulings (streitige Sorgerechtsverfahren) in which the court's decision follows the Jugendamt's recommendation, disaggregated by Land (federal state) and court.
- Custody distribution by nationality and gender: Outcome data for all custody proceedings under §1671, §1684, and §1697a BGB, broken down by the nationality and gender of each parent.
- Post-separation residency: Actual living arrangements of children following judicial or consensual custody determinations, tracked annually.
The legal basis for the petition draws on four provisions of EU primary law:
- Article 18 TFEU — Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of nationality. If custody outcomes correlate with parent nationality, and Germany refuses to measure this, it is structurally incapable of fulfilling its Treaty obligations.
- Article 81 TFEU — Judicial cooperation in civil matters with cross-border implications. Effective cooperation requires comparable data; Germany's refusal to publish undermines the Brussels II ter framework.
- Article 24 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights — The best interests of the child. A system that cannot audit its own outcomes cannot credibly claim to serve children's best interests.
- Article 41 of the Charter — Right to good administration. Transparency and accountability are preconditions of good administration, not optional extras.
Download the petition materials:
📄 Policy Briefing (PDF) — Background analysis and legal framework
📝 Petition Text (DOCX) — Ready for co-signature and submission
V. What France Does Right
France is not a perfect system. But on the specific question of custody data transparency, it offers a model that Germany could replicate with minimal institutional effort.
The French Ministry of Justice commissions and publishes regular studies on custody outcomes. The most cited series is the work of Maud Guillonneau and Émilie Moreau, whose reports — published through the Sous-direction de la Statistique et des Études (SDSE) — provide detailed breakdowns of custody rulings by type (sole maternal, sole paternal, alternating residence), by whether the decision was contested or consensual, and by court jurisdiction. These reports have been published periodically since 2003, creating a longitudinal dataset that enables trend analysis.
Separately, INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques) tracks post-separation residency through tax data. French tax law allows parents with résidence alternée (shared residence) to split the dependent-child tax credit. This administrative byproduct creates a reliable population-level dataset on how many children actually live in shared arrangements — not merely how many court orders mandate it.
Additionally, INED (Institut national d'études démographiques) publishes demographic analyses in its Population & Sociétés bulletin, including studies on parental separation patterns by household type and parental characteristics.
Germany could produce equivalent data tomorrow. Destatis already collects divorce and custody petition data. The Jugendamt already files written recommendations in contested proceedings — these are part of the court record. Tax authorities already know where children are registered. The infrastructure exists. The political will does not.
VI. The Logic of Refusal
Why would a government refuse to collect data that might exonerate its institutions? The question answers itself.
If Germany's family courts treat all parents equally regardless of nationality, disaggregated data would demonstrate this. It would silence critics, satisfy the European Parliament, and strengthen Germany's credibility in cross-border family law disputes under Brussels II ter. Publication would be costless and politically beneficial.
The refusal to publish invites the inference that the data, if collected, would not be exonerating. This is not proof of discrimination — it is evidence of a system that behaves as though it has something to hide.
The Jugendamt occupies a unique procedural position in European family law. It is not a party to proceedings, yet it participates in them. It is not a court-appointed expert, yet its recommendations carry significant weight. It is a municipal body, yet its actions have consequences that cross national borders under EU free-movement law. No other EU member state has an institution with a comparable combination of access, influence, and opacity.
This structural uniqueness makes data collection more important, not less. The more unusual the institution, the greater the need for empirical scrutiny.
VII. Conclusion
Transparency is not a favour that governments grant to citizens. It is an obligation that democratic institutions owe to the people they serve — and, in this case, to the children whose lives they determine.
Germany has been asked, formally and repeatedly, by the European Parliament to publish custody data. It has refused for eight years. A new petition now seeks to renew and sharpen that demand, grounding it explicitly in Treaty provisions that Germany is bound to uphold.
The logic is simple. If the data exonerates Germany's family courts, publish it. If it doesn't, fix the system. The only outcome that is indefensible is the status quo: a deliberate statistical void that makes accountability impossible and leaves thousands of families — German and non-German alike — unable to assess whether they received justice.
Count the outcomes. Publish the numbers. Let the data speak.