Exactly that - a purely populist decision. With this method, you're giving the Bild newspaper a free pass to make politics. And all this just for very few special cases that could have been left for courts to clarify. Of course, one doesn't need to mention that the Union (at least Stoiber) believes that this is far from going far enough. Politicians are not above letting themselves be made a fool of in such ridiculous ways by a trashy tabloid like the Bild newspaper.
I found the original article at TAZ.