IF ESKIMOS have dozens of words for snow, Germans have as many for bureaucracy. The most popular is Amtsschimmel, a word of obscure origin that translates roughly as “the office horse”. The government declares that it is bent on chasing these clodhoppers out of Germany. But has it any more chance of success than in the past? The Institute for the German Economy, the research arm of the country's business associations, hopes so, if only because the economy might be strangled to death unless red tape is loosened.
Germans are fed up with forms and rules. Pollsters at the Allensbach Institute say that as many as 90% of Germans have had rows with bureaucrats, up from 64% in 1978. Bild, Germany's biggest tabloid, recently sent out a reporter in search of ridiculous rules. One example: a tailor who had to put up a sign saying “fire extinguisher” next to (guess what) her fire extinguisher, to produce a thick folder with all regulations relevant to her business, to raise her work table by ten centimetres, to buy a special emergency kit, and to check if her only employee was allergic to nickel—at a cost of €400 ($428).
Germany is, in short, one of the most rule-bound countries in the world. And that is bad news for the economy, particularly for entrepreneurs hoping to set up in business. A new World Bank study, “Doing Business in 2004”, illustrates the problem (see article). The study shows that it takes an average of 45 days to register a new firm in Germany, compared with 18 in Britain and only four in America. The process is also cheaper in America, Britain, Canada and France than in Germany.
The government has launched a “masterplan for reducing bureaucracy”, listing dozens of cases where archaic rules should be scrapped or simplified. It recently brought in a bill to do away with such workplace regulations as where to put light switches or the shape of rubbish bins. The government has also chosen three regions where some laws will be suspended while local and federal agencies try out alternatives.
Yet it will take years for Germany to match America and Britain. Germans may inveigh against bureaucrats, but they have a soft spot for state mollycoddling. In any case, over a third of the members of the federal parliament are former civil servants, hardly likely to be in the forefront of a campaign to cut bureaucracy. Even some businessmen are ambivalent, for regulation can be a useful barrier to competition. The supposedly free-market opposition has attacked government plans to loosen laws protecting guilds of architects and craftsmen from competition.
The language of officialdom hardly helps. A recent example of cutting red tape was a law to speed up approval for building roads. Its name: Verkehrswegeplanungsbeschleunigungsgesetz.
