Medienstaatsvertrag (MStV, Interstate Media Treaty), Sections 91 to 95, Media Intermediaries

Section 2(2) number 16 defines a media intermediary as any telemedium that also aggregates, selects and presents third parties' journalistic and editorial offerings in a generally accessible way without combining them into an overall offering.

Section 91(2) excludes from the provisions on media intermediaries, except section 95, intermediaries that reach in Germany on average over six months fewer than one million users a month or are forecast to, intermediaries specialized in aggregating, selecting and presenting content relating to goods or services, and intermediaries that serve exclusively private or family purposes.

Section 92 requires providers of media intermediaries to designate an authorized recipient in Germany, to be made known in the offering in an easily recognizable and directly accessible manner, on whom documents in fine proceedings under section 115 can be served.

Section 93(1) requires providers of media intermediaries, to safeguard diversity of opinion, to keep easily perceptible, directly accessible and permanently available the criteria that decide whether content gains access to the intermediary and whether it stays, and the central criteria of aggregation, selection and presentation of content and their weighting, including information on how the algorithms used work, in understandable language.

Under section 93(2) and (3), a provider with a thematic specialization must make it perceptible through the design of its offering, and changes to the published criteria or to that orientation must be made perceptible without delay in the same way. Section 93(4) requires providers of media intermediaries that offer social networks to ensure that telemedia are labelled as section 18(3) requires.

Section 18(3) requires providers of telemedia in social networks to make the fact of automation recognizable for content or messages created automatically by a computer program, where the user account used for it appears from its outward form to be meant for use by natural persons. Section 94(1) forbids media intermediaries to discriminate against journalistic and editorial offerings on whose perceptibility they have a particularly high influence.

Section 94(2) defines discrimination as a systematic departure, without objectively justified reason, from the criteria published under section 93(1) to (3) in favor of or to the detriment of a specific offering, or criteria that directly or indirectly unfairly and systematically hinder offerings.

Under section 94(3), only the affected provider of journalistic and editorial content can assert a violation of section 94 with the competent Landesmedienanstalt, which in obvious cases can also pursue it of its own motion. Section 95 requires providers of media intermediaries to produce the necessary documents to the competent Landesmedienanstalt on request.

Section 115(1), second sentence, numbers 41 to 43 make it an administrative offence to fail to designate an authorized recipient in Germany, to fail to keep the information required by section 93(1) available, and to fail to make a thematic specialization perceptible. Numbers 44 to 47 do the same for failing to make changes perceptible without delay, failing to ensure the labelling under section 93(4), discriminating contrary to section 94(1) and failing to produce documents under section 95.

Section 115(2) sets a maximum fine of 500,000 euros for these offences. Section 115(3) names the Landesmedienanstalt competent under section 106 as the administrative authority. The treaty took effect on 7 November 2020. The text described here is the version in force since 1 December 2025 under the Seventh Medienänderungsstaatsvertrag.