Traffic light coalition: Environment Minister SteffiLemke delays bureaucracy reduction

2023-08-19 15:42:44

Can not separate from regulations: Steffi Lemke Image: dpa

Again, a Green from the left wing of the party is in the way: reducing bureaucracy is one of the government’s central projects – but the environment minister does not name any regulation that she wants to abolish.

It’s actually a topic with which politicians can present themselves very well at the moment. If you ask around what the causes of Germany’s weak growth are, many people will say the same thing: high energy prices, a lack of workers – and a dysfunctional administration that paralyzes itself with too many and sometimes contradictory regulations. “Reducing bureaucracy” is the word of the hour.

Ralph Bollmann

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of business and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

That is why the FDP-led Ministry of Justice recently asked business associations for specific requests, for regulations that should be changed. 450 proposals were received, ranging from easy-to-implement ones, which a ministry can decide on its own, to demanding ones, for which the Bundestag would have to look at the Basic Law. The house then negotiated with the other departments. “It’s a tough fight,” is how entrepreneur Lutz Goebel, head of the Regulatory Control Council that has recently been attached to the Ministry of Justice, describes the situation. “There are always a thousand reasons why things are not abolished.”