Versprochen & Gehalten: A German Political Promise Tracker
An AI app that monitors what German politicians promise in ZDF/ARD interviews, Bundestag speeches, and coalition deals, then tracks follow-through against news coverage and parliamentary records to give citizens a clear accountability view.
German-speaking politically engaged citizens tired of vague political rhetoric and empty follow-through
- Automatic promise extraction from transcripts of Sommerinterviews, Bundestag debates, and coalition agreements with date and speaker tagged
- Evidence matching that links each promise to later news, legislation, or voting records and labels it as 'kept,' 'broken,' or 'in progress'
- Per-politician accountability dashboard with shareable fact-cards sized for WhatsApp and Instagram
- Weekly digest of the most consequential kept and broken promises across the Bundestag
Steinmeier's warning that the presidency must now take a stance against anti-democratic forces, combined with the AfD's rise and the new reform package, has spiked citizen appetite for tools that hold politicians to their stated words.
Solid citizen appetite evidenced by abgeordnetenwatch.de (well-established, multi-million user platform) and multiple university/nonprofit promise trackers, plus AI-powered Regierungschecker already tracking 2,145 Bund promises with 37% strong evidence.Regierungschecker ↗abgeordnetenwatch | Demokratie. Besser machen. ↗
Direct competitors already exist and overlap heavily: PoliticalPromises.org, Regierungschecker.de (AI-powered promise tracking with Primärquellen — nearly identical to proposed MVP), Leipzig University coalition tracker, and abgeordnetenwatch.de (large incumbent). Only the ZDF/ARD interview-monitoring angle is undifferentiated but niche.PoliticalPromises.org - Was wurde versprochen? Was wurde umgesetzt? ↗Regierungschecker ↗Coalition tracker: Leipzig University checks election promises ↗
German civic-accountability tools are overwhelmingly non-profit/donation-funded (abgeordnetenwatch, PoliticalPromises, Leipzig tracker) and ad-free by norm; willingness-to-pay is low for political transparency content and competing free incumbents would crush a paid product.abgeordnetenwatch | Demokratie. Besser machen. ↗PoliticalPromises.org - Was wurde versprochen? Was wurde umgesetzt? ↗
Political accountability is evergreen across 4-year election cycles with rising baseline demand amid AfD/polarization discourse; no technological obsolescence risk.Coalition tracker: Leipzig University checks election promises ↗
Strong feasibility: Bundestag provides all Plenarprotokolle as structured XML/JSON open data since 1949, with mature open-source tooling (OpenBundestag, GermaParl TEI corpus); Regierungschecker already proves the AI-promise-tracking pipeline works. ARD/ZDF interview monitoring adds complexity but is solvable via speech-to-text.Deutscher Bundestag - Open Data ↗GitHub - florianseif/openbundestag: OpenBundestag ↗GermaParl Corpus of Plenary Protocols ↗