Traffic light decisions: Germany agrees Yes, but country

“If you start changing any of the guidelines, then three people will immediately arrive and warn you why exactly that shouldn’t be the case,” Hamburg’s first mayor, Peter Tschentscher, once told the newspaper star. The reason at the time was his visit to the local landscaping association; the keyword was de-bureaucratization. But the head of the city just waved it off with a sigh, because in Germany the yes, but rules rule.

House builders know this; they despair at the myriad of specifications, some of which contradict each other. The building law needs to be streamlined, they say, but it immediately echoes back: Yes, but the safety, yes, but the fire protection, yes, but the noise.

German urge for individual justice

There’s always something, everything makes sense, most things are important, nothing should remain unregulated: the complex documentation requirement in care, data protection in the electronic patient file, the purchase of heat pumps, the guarantee that no rubber ducks are produced in Laos Human rights are violated.

“Urge to individual justice“That’s what it’s called. In Germany it is particularly pronounced. Taking into account as many needs as possible sounds like balance and justice, and that is what it is meant to be, but unfortunately it paralyzes every step in any direction. Meanwhile, the yes, butitis has also reached the federal government and, in all its tragedy, has taken the form of Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir.

It was, among other things, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck who pushed his party colleague Özdemir between the chairs. Because the government has to save money after the debt restructuring, the top cabinet wants, among other things, to abolish agricultural diesel subsidies. Actually a good thing for the Green Özdemir. Because of climate protection and stuff like that. It’s stupid, however, that Agriculture Minister Özdemir wanted to prevent exactly that so as not to burden farmers with even higher fuel costs.

The French get diesel subsidies

Added to this are inflation, expensive diesel, the general cheap mentality and food companies that push down purchase prices wherever they can. By the way, the vast majority of farmers are at a loss without their heavy, gas-guzzling machines; there are hardly any electric alternatives. Incidentally, the deletion is also unfair in intra-European competition because fuel for colleagues in France continues to be subsidized – German agriculture is expensive agriculture. There are many reasons, many yes, buts, and each one is understandable.

Whether and what these individual measures actually bring to the individual farmers is lost in the jungle of overall agricultural subsidies. . This corresponds to an average of almost 23,000 euros for each of the approximately 300,000 recipients. What would be gained if Cem Özdemir, the minister with the yes-but-heart, were to be listened to by his cabinet colleagues Scholz, Habeck and Lindner? Not a euro would be saved, no farm would be more climate-friendly and no incentive would be created for anyone to look for electromobility or other environmentally friendly technologies.

Outcry, improvement, outcry

However, individual hardships and injustices will never be avoided, but they would be easier to buffer if the austerity package had something like a unifying narrative, at least a headline. The half-baked activism is, of course, due to a lack of time, but even if the federal government allows itself more peace and quiet, its projects sometimes fizzle out in the small-scale, everything-right business. Like the heating law, for example: First huge outcry, then touch-up after touch-up until it so complicated in the end becomesthat no one anymore sees through. And then? Is the outcry still there?

It is to be feared that these endless yes-but discussions will now be canceled out by the cobbled-together austerity package. Because Germany is big enough to find enough people who will feel offended on every topic. E-car buyers are right, and probably also diesel vehicle owners or heating users. It is even more to be feared that each of their objections will be heard by the federal government – and that they will reopen the package of their own decisions after just a few days. Planning security, that was once in the yes, but country.