I don't see what a bunch of corporate entities have to do within election campaign. This is a response the the German publics concern that a foreign government is doing content analysis on emails within Germany. This makes it harder for the spooks down in Ramstein to analyse the traffic flowing between German consumers and German corporations, which is a damn good thing. This spying might also be (mis)used for corporate espionage as well.

It isn't going to stop a German police warrant or BND investigation requiring these companies to hand over your emails, and the EU data retention polices are still in place, but it does stop the foreign spooks sticking their noses in where it isn't wanted. DE-MAIL, is as you say, bullshit, but that isn't why this is really about.

I know that from my GMX account I can email someone on a Web.de account, and even if the Internet decides to route my email over the Atlantic first or through Frankfurt where I hazard a guess the NSA will be doing they optical splitting, it doesn't matter.

If they want to read my emails they have to brute force that or have a copy of the keys.

This is a small, but great step forward in my opinion.