The Federal Agency for Child and Youth Protection in the Media (, BzKJ) is a German federal agency responsible for reviewing media considered harmful to minors under German law. Until 2021, it was known as the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Young Persons (, BPjM). It is based in Bonn, and operates under the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.
The agency maintains a list of published media it has deemed harmful to children. Media present on this list may face legal restrictions on its sale, distribution, and advertising in Germany.
Legal basis Article 5 of the Basic Law of Germany guarantees the rights of freedom of expression and artistic freedom. However, these rights are not unlimited; Article 5, Paragraph 2 states that they may be restricted in several cases, including "in provisions for the protection of young persons."
The Basic Law does not define specific criteria for speech to be considered harmful to a young person. Instead, standards are determined by Bundestag legislation. The Law for the Protection of Minors in Public was adopted in 1951. In the following decades, the Bundestag enacted additional legislation to refine these standards on harmful content.
Major updates were made in 2002 through the Protection of Young Persons Act (Jugendschutzgesetz, JuSchG) and the State Treaty on Media Protection of Young Persons (Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag, JMStV), which regulate physical and digital media respectively. The former regulates freedom of expression in physical media, such as printed works, videos, CD-ROMs, and DVD-ROMs, while the latter regulates broadcasts and virtual media. These two laws provide the legal basis for the actions of the BzKJ.
History The BzKJ's earliest precursor, the Federal Review Board for Works Harmful to Youth and Adolescents (, BPjS), held its first session in 1954. It was formally established by the Law on the Distribution of Works Harmful to Youth and Adolescents in 1958. The law was subject to political debate: the CDU/CSU had originally proposed the bill in 1949, but opposition from the SPD and KPD led to a prolonged revision process that delayed its passage for years.
The BPjS's first session took place in 1954. CDU Minister of the Interior Gerhard Schröder had requested the BPjS investigate Il Piccolo Sceriffo, an Italian comic book series, and two editions of the Tarzan comics. Schröder claimed that Il Piccolo Sceriffo was "the result of a degenerate imagination" and "promoted intellectual laziness," and that the Tarzan comics featured a character in a "skimpy fur bikini." The BPjS ultimately decided to ban one edition of Il Piccolo Sceriffo on the grounds of its crude language, graphic violence, and presentations of unjustified attacks against American Indians. However, it chose not to ban the Tarzan comics.
In 1978, the number and type of institutions that could petition the BPjS to request a work be indexed widened. Since then, state- and district-level youth welfare offices have been authorized to submit applications. The number of indexing applications increased following this change. During the 1980s, heavy metal music and violent video games emerged as primary areas of concern for the BPjS.
Following the Erfurt school massacre, the Protection of Young Persons Act was passed in 2002 to replace the Law on the Distribution of Works Harmful to Young Persons, as well as several similar laws. The new law clarified the area over which the BPjS had authority and added new forms of media to its jurisdiction, such as websites and computer software. As a result, the organization's name was changed to the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Young Persons ( or BPjM). As before, state youth protection agencies and non-governmental youth organizations could request that the board examine works they believed to be inappropriate for children. However, works that had already received an age restriction rating from the Voluntary Self-Regulation of the Film Industry (FSK) or the Entertainment Software Self-Regulation Body (USK) could no longer be indexed. The new law also required that all media indexed by the BPjM be automatically delisted after 25 years, following a review of the content.
In May 2016, SPD Family Minister Manuela Schwesig announced the government's intent to reform the BPjM to better protect children "from the dangers of the World Wide Web". In May 2021, the Jugendschutzgesetz was amended to implement these changes. To reflect its new, broader mandate, the BPjM's name was changed to the Federal Agency for Child and Youth Protection in the Media. Other amendments to the law required streaming services and online gaming platforms to transparently implement age verification systems.
List of presiding officers The following people have served as the presiding officer of the BzKJ and its predecessor: No.Presiding OfficerTerm StartTerm End1Robert Schilling195419662Werner Jungleblodt196619693Rudolf Stefen196919914Elke Monssen-Engberding199120165Martina Hannak-Meinke201620206Sebastian Gutknecht2021Incumbent
Role and responsibilities The BzKJ has three primary statutory responsibilities: Indexing media harmful to young people, thereby restricting their accessibility to adults; Supporting the development and distribution of educational media; Informing the public about youth media protection.
§ 18 Paragraph 1 of the Protection of Young Persons Act defines "endangering to young people" as that which is harmful "to the development of children or young people or to their education as autonomous and socially-compatible individuals." The law defines harmful content as material that is "immoral, brutalizing, or which provokes violence, crime, or racial hatred".
Under § 15 Paragraph 2 of the Protection of Young Persons Act, certain types of content are subject to restricted distribution by virtue of the law on account of their obvious harm to young people, without the need to add them to the Index. These include: content proscribed by the criminal law, such as Volksverhetzung (incitement to hate or violence against a group of people), instructions on how to commit a crime, glorification or trivialization of violence, content glorifying war, incitement to racial hatred, pornography, and content depicting minors in harmful situations.
Upon application by a youth welfare office or, less commonly, at the request of an accredited non-governmental youth organization, the BzKJ examines whether a written work, film, computer game, or other media product contains content harmful to young persons. The BzKJ must examine works submitted to it through applications made by governmental bodies, but the BzKJ exercises its own discretion on which requests from non-governmental organizations are accepted for examination.
Federal Office for the Enforcement of Children's Rights in Digital Services Since the 2021 reform, the BzKJ also houses the Federal Office for the Enforcement of Children's Rights in Digital Services (, KidD). The KidD monitors online platforms' compliance with structural precautionary measures for youth protection under the European Digital Services Act (DSA). It can initiate proceedings against platforms that fail to implement adequate safety measures, such as safe default settings or effective reporting mechanisms for harmful content. The KidD works in coordination with the Federal Network Agency and the Federal Cartel Office as part of Germany's DSA enforcement framework.
Recent activities In December 2025, the BzKJ indexed a generative AI text-to-image tool for containing content harmful to minors, marking one of the first such actions against AI-generated media in Germany. The agency also administers a federal funding program for child-appropriate digital offerings, with a 2026 thematic focus on artificial intelligence, interactive media, and democratic participation.
Indexing The authors, producers, and rights-holders of the work in question are notified of the application or request for indexing and have the right to a legal hearing regarding the examination of their work.
The BzKJ may not continue with the indexing process if the media in question has been rated by the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft (FSK) and did not receive an "Adults only" ratingBefore April 2003, the rating used was Nicht freigegeben unter 18 Jahren. Movies so rated before that date can still get this rating when a new label releases such a movie and therefore has to apply for a re-rating. or if it is a piece of entertainment software that has been rated by the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) on or after 1 April 2003.
Decision-making panel The decision on whether a work is harmful to young persons is made by a panel typically consisting of twelve members. The panel may be reduced to three members when a work is deemed obviously harmful to young persons. On these panels, youth protection agencies, the arts, and businesses are represented by honorary assessors. The members of the panel act independently and have a duty not to let their actions be guided by their own interests.
The twelve-member panel consists of the Presiding Officer (or Deputy Presiding Officer) and assessors representing art, literature, book publishers, video publishers, the telecommunications industry, private-sector youth organizations, public-sector youth organizations, teaching staff, and the clergy. Additionally, three rotating panel members represent the ministries responsible for youth protection in the sixteen States of Germany.
The hearing, in which representatives of the relevant work may participate, is oral and not open to the public. However, the presiding officer can permit third parties to attend the hearing. Similarly to court proceedings, transcripts of the hearing are not published, but written reasons for a decision can be requested by those not involved in the proceedings. The names of the assessors are disclosed to those participating in the proceedings and are also listed in both the transcript and the indexed decision. If individuals not involved in the proceedings request access to the indexed decision, any identifying information (of assessors as well as any companies or lawyers involved) is removed before the request is fulfilled.
The quorum for the twelve-member panel is nine members, and decisions to index require a two-thirds majority vote. If this majority is not reached, the indexing is rejected. In the event that the BzKJ holds a meeting with exactly nine people, the required majority is seven out of nine instead.
Three-member panels must have at least one assessor representative of art, literature, the book trade and publishing, or the video or telecommunications industry. An application for indexing will be accepted only if the panel votes unanimously.
The person responsible for an indexed work can file suit against a decision to index in an administrative court.
List of Media Harmful to Young People The List of Media Harmful to Young People (colloquially known as the Index) is published only for physical media, with virtual works excluded from the list in order to avoid advertising them. It is technically illegal for third parties to publish the list of indexed virtual media. However, there are multiple websites where the list is available. The only sanctioned lists can be found in the quarterly journal BzKJ-Aktuell, an official publication of the BzKJ.
While the publication of the online lists may contravene legal restrictions, their status under German law has not been conclusively determined in court. Only a small number of them have shut down voluntarily after receiving complaints from a number of non-governmental youth protection associations. The publication of these lists may violate the Youth Protection Act. If not, a ban on the publication of the lists would not be permitted under Article 5 of the German constitution.