Federal government: Buschmann promises companies substantial relief

Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) has appealed to his own traffic light coalition to leave the crisis mode behind in budgetary policy and in the preparation of laws and to switch back to normal operations.

“In recent years we have often made laws in a pig gallop,” said Buschmann of the German Press Agency. “That wasn’t good for the laws. They were flawed.”

The high government spending and the high speed of legislation were due to both the corona pandemic and the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. The war not only impacted defense spending, but also made it necessary to mitigate the impact of rising energy costs. Just as one has to go back to the “regular operation of the debt brake” in budgetary policy, it is also necessary to “return to the regular mode with its deadlines” when it comes to draft legislation.

Economy suffers from “bureaucratic burn-out”

“You can’t seriously believe that if you give another house a law to review, that you can do it solidly and seriously in 24 hours,” the FDP minister pointed out. “If you’re supposed to put your hand in the fire for making things work, you need more time.”

In order to lead Germany out of the recession, it needs a “trend reversal in the bureaucratic burden”. He can understand the loud complaints of the trade associations about too many legal regulations and reporting obligations.

“My impression is that part of the German economy is really suffering from a bureaucratic burn-out,” Buschmann told the dpa. “What we as legislators, as a federal government, as states, as the European Union demand from companies exhausts them so much that they can hardly take care of their core business – that must not be.”

A building block to remedy this is the planned bureaucracy relief law. The key points for this are to be decided at a cabinet meeting at the end of August. “I’m in good spirits that we can do something substantial there.”