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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: Germany’s autumn Covid rules are a giant mess beyond parody

As other European countries appear to have left the stress of strict Covid rules long behind them, Germany is gearing up to introduce a new and even more complicated patchwork of measures in autumn. Brian Melican asks whether, at this stage, the restrictions are really proportionate to the risks.

Published: 25 August 2022 10:26 CEST

People enjoy Oktoberfest in Munich in 2019 - the last time the festival took place properly before Covid. Brian Melican doesn't think Germany's Covid plan for autumn 2022 is proportionate. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Felix Hörhager

In just under a month’s time, on September 23rd, the current Infection Protect Act will expire – only to be replaced with an even more complicated and pointless successor. Yes: the new act made it through cabinet on Wednesday and looks likely to pass Bundestag in a few weeks. But it will only actually enter into force on October 1st, leaving a potentially 7-day gap in which what happens is unclear, but will – this being Germany – probably involve excessive amounts of mask-wearing and lateral-flow-testing.

Whatever happens, though, Munich will, after a two-year hiatus, be celebrating a bumper Oktoberfest, from September 17th to October 3rd. Over the course of these two weeks, an estimated six million people will crowd into the tents and beer gardens of the city’s Theresienwiese, consuming an average of 1.13 litres of beer with 0.08 roast chickens per head and exchanging quadrillions of virus particles every minute. All of which will be legal under the current set of legislation – and will remain legal under the replacement.

What probably won’t be legal (who knows quite yet with the confusing set of rules proposed), is to use the Munich U-Bahn without wearing a mask on your way to and from Oktoberfest. At the same time, statistically speaking, you are quite likely to be among the 92 percent of people in Germany who already, as of late July, carried antibodies against Sars-COV2 (see this study by the RKI) – a figure which, if the number of people I know who have just had Covid is anything to go by, is likely to have increased further to almost 100 percent by mid-September. This makes a mockery of the term ‘Infection Protection Act’ – and also explains why hospitalisations from Covid are low, intensive care bed occupation even lower, and deaths half of what they were six months back.

People wear FFP2 masks on the U-Bahn in Munich in December 2021. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Sven Hoppe

This is all very good news, and forms part of a Europe-wide success story based on an unprecedented vaccine delivery programme and the fortuitously mild Omicron variant. In all of our neighbouring countries, it has been taken as such. Denmark, for instance, has now been living (and living very well) without any form of Covid restrictions for nearly six months. Later in spring, every country around us that had not already done so quietly confined coronavirus to the realm of regrettable endemic illness. Has the sky fallen in on them? No. Are their health services on their knees? No. Are ours? Also no. Yet in Germany, we are still intent on replacing one set of vestigial busy-body public health rules with another set of even more convoluted ones.

‘Beyond parody’

Without going too deeply into the details of what the tripartite coalition has planned (neither you nor I have all day, and said details are still subject to change), suffice to say that the new Infection Protection Act is so stereotypically German that it’s beyond parody.

Federalism and buck-passing? Check! As ever, the 16 states will be able to more or less set their own rules while demanding that Berlin does the dirty work. Fiendishly complex systems destined to fail on first contact with reality? You bet! As of September, states will be able to reintroduce compulsory mask-wearing indoors – but can make exceptions for people who have just had a booster jab or get a negative test result (but only in restaurants, bars, and other leisure settings); the same might apply in hospitals and care homes, but definitely not in primary schools (although maybe in secondary schools); states may also choose to drop mask requirements on local transport, but they will be ramped up to FFP2 on all intercity train services and flights (unless, of course, you’re flying Olaf Airways and have Frequent Habeck Status…)

If, however, the situation deteriorates (as defined by criteria yet to be announced) these exceptions will all be removed and we go nuclear (i.e. outdoor mask-wearing). This is a phase shift which, to complete our round of German Bullshit Bingo, is explained/further muddied by a niche automotive analogy: summer tires (“Go about your business as usual, but don’t forget your FFP2.”) vs. winter tires (“Oh no…”), with an optional escalation to snow chains (“We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tells ye!”). Want to laugh-cry? Try Karl Lauterbach’s overly complicated PowerPoint slide (pictures below in a tweet) or Marco Buschmann’s half-hearted attempt at defending the madness yesterday morning on Deutschlandfunk.

Der Entwurf für neues Infektionsschutzgesetz ist fertig. FFP2 Masken im Innenraum von Anfang an. Ausnahme: Nachweis Tests, frische Impfung oder frisch Genesen in Gastro oder ähnlich. Wenn Fallzahl stark steigt: Masken auch draußen wo Abstände nicht reichen und Obergrenzen drinnen pic.twitter.com/7JQRxWlOBL

— Prof. Karl Lauterbach (@Karl_Lauterbach) August 3, 2022

In short, the new law pours all of our quirks and foibles into a form so perfectly potty it looks like satirist Jan Böhmermann brought Harald Schmidt out of retirement before teaming up with the ghost of that great observer of German national neuroses, Loriot, to poke fun at us.

Which begs the question: why are we about to do this? And why are we going to do it in such a patently crazy, borderline unenforceable way?

The two sides of Germany’s Covid rules

First: why are we doing this? The short answer to that is: Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). For whatever reason (and I don’t think it’s fair to speculate too much about personality traits), Lauterbach is more afraid of what Covid might do to the population – and less afraid of the corrosive societal effect of lasting restrictions – than other ministers with his brief in comparable countries. It could turn out, of course, that Lauterbach is right: if the “killer variant” he prophesises does surface this autumn, I and a lot of others will be doing public penance.

My hunch is, though, that the German Health Minister doesn’t have a direct line to a secret source of Covid wisdom and can’t see into the future: his change of position on whether everyone should get a fourth jab or just the over-60s proves as much. Instead, he and a few others around him (notably the Green’s health spokesman Janosch Dahmen) are probably seeing exactly the same facts and figures as their counterparts in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden… (as well as many German virologists and epidemiologists in favour of scrapping restrictions), but drawing wildly different conclusions.

Second: if we’re doing this, why are we doing it in such a complicated way? The short answer to that is: Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP). He and most of his party – the (emphasis on) Free Democrats – are not in favour of endless restrictions without justification. And, as it turns out, neither is our constitution. And I for one am pleased that, after being first ignored and then laxly interpreted for over two years, our cherished Grundgesetz is now once again being taken seriously.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Marco Buschmann (FDP), fist bump at the press conference on Wednesday. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Wolfgang Kumm

One of its guiding principles is that curbs to the freedoms it guarantees must be a) proportionate and b) appropriate: as Buschmann has argued, forcing people triply-vaccinated against and twice recovered from Covid to cover their mouth and nose when entering a restaurant is, at this stage of proceedings, no longer proportionate nor appropriate, and so states will be allowed (read: encouraged) to keep restrictions light here. Why the same doesn’t apply to trains or planes is anyone’s guess – here’s mine: political horse-trading to reach a compromise; or perhaps a shrewd FDP move to finally see off restrictions by making them so inconsistent that they represent easy prey for complaints to the Constitutional Court this autumn.

Ah yes, this autumn. What a wonderful place Germany will be, with the lights switched off in high streets and those who can no longer afford to heat their flats being held up on the doors to bars as they desperately search for the long-neglected CovPass app so that they can at least gain access to the warm fug without having to run back home for their grubby FFP2… So if you weren’t yet planning to head to Munich for the Oktoberfest this year, my advice would to hightail it down there for one last blow-out before things get really unpleasant.

Member comments

Anonymous - 25 August 2022 at 11:59 CEST

I’m with you 100&! Great Article.
Anonymous - 31 August 2022 at 13:40 CEST

With all due respect, I understand people’s frustrations with the pandemic measures, but I beg you to look at this situation from the perspective of an immunocompromised individual. At the present moment they cannot go anywhere safely! This is because people do not want to do simple little things to protect them from severe sickness or death, like wearing a mask for example. Wearing a mask is so easy! Also, can we all agree that just cutting the death rate in half IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. There are still 100s of people dying every week. These people do not deserve their fate. We all should be willing to make small sacrifices like mask wearing in public transit / airplanes / unavoidable public places if it means we can save just 1 person from dying.
Anonymous - 2 September 2022 at 10:40 CEST

Yep. Before moving here, I always thought Germans were so ordered and logical. It is just a circus really.

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OPINION: How bureaucracy is slowly killing Germany

In the summer of 2022, I attended a Q&A session that Olaf Scholz held with members of the public in the city of Magdeburg. Coming only a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of the questions centred on sanctions, energy costs and Berlin’s response to the war.

But the response I found most revealing was on the dull topic of tax reform.

An audience member asked Scholz why the VAT rate on dog food is seven percent but on baby food it is 19 percent. Parts of the system “don’t seem very coherent to me,” the man said with obvious understatement.

“I don’t think you’ll find anyone who understands the list of VAT exceptions,” Scholz replied with a grin, adding that “at any rate I don’t understand it.”

“But I can tell you that all attempts to change it have ended in a massive disaster,” he continued. “If we were to lay an empty table today, we would definitely do differently. But the system is there now and I think we will have to live with it for a while yet.”

It was a fascinating answer. Essentially, Scholz admitted that there are some regulations that are so complex that no one really understands them anymore. But trying to simplify them just isn’t worth the effort.

It reminded me of a story I once heard about Cairo’s famously dysfunctional traffic system.

Legend has it that Egypt invited a group of Japanese planners to come up with a way to fix it. But the Japanese were so befuddled by what they found that they advised the Egyptians to leave things exactly as they were. The system was so confusing that any attempt to tamper with it might only make things worse.

A similar thing could be said of Germany’s regulatory system. It can be contradictory and infuriatingly slow, but open the can of worms of trying to simplify it and you will probably live to regret it.

private pension plans spain

VAT is just one more confusing piece of German bureaucracy. Photo: Mathieu Stern/Unsplash

Summer snow and other oddities of German red tape

VAT serves as a notorious example. But, wherever you look in German life, you will find egregious cases of sprawling and overlapping regulations.

A few amusing examples:

In August 2022, the town of Esslingen in Baden-Württemberg wanted to organise a summer fête to help local restaurants get back on their feet after Covid. The idea was to build temporary food huts that restaurants could rent cheaply. But planning authorities insisted the huts be built to take the weight of heavy snowfall – during a month with average temperatures of 19C. The fête went ahead, but the eventual costs were “exorbitant,” city officials said.

Last winter, the town of Tübingen acted on an appeal from the federal government to cut gas usage. They decided to switch off street lights between 1 am and 5 am, something that would cut energy costs by 10 percent. Shortly afterwards though, they had to backtrack. The measure contravened a regulation on providing light for pedestrians. In the event of an accident they could have been sued.

A landlord in Hanover recently recounted her efforts to turn an empty attic into student housing. Her planning application was first rejected by fire authorities who said that the branches of a tree were blocking an escape route. Their proposal to cut the tree back was then turned down by the city authority for green spaces, which argued that trees form “a vital part of the city scenery” and “must be protected at all costs.”

Flood of new rules

It is not as if politicians aren’t aware that over-regulation is having a stifling effect on society’s ability to function and adapt.

In its coalition agreement, Scholz’ ‘traffic light’ government committed itself to cutting bureaucracy 63 times. There is an entire section in the agreement on how they planned to cut down official paperwork.

But changing such a deep-seated German mentality is a different matter.

In a withering report published in November, the government’s own bureaucracy watchdog, the Normenkontrollrat, concluded that under the current government the costs of bureaucracy “have reached a level that we’ve never seen before.”

Far from cutting back paperwork, the traffic light coalition has loaded companies, administrators and citizens with a whole raft of new rules, the watchdog said. “Ever more regulations have to be observed and implemented in less and less time,” it concluded.

The frustration is being felt most acutely by local administrators, who say that they just don’t have enough staff to cope anymore.

An open letter sent to Scholz by town councils in Baden-Württemberg pleaded that “things can’t go on like this. Ever more laws and regulations, all too often containing mistakes …are simply resulting in an unmanageable flood of tasks.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s revered Mittelstand, or small and medium sized family businesses, has warned that over-regulation is the single biggest threat to their future viability. A survey among middle-sized companies last year showed that they were far more concerned about regulation than energy prices. Other surveys have shown that a majority of companies don’t understand the regulations they are expected to follow, while two thirds say they make no sense.

“Enormous bureaucratic burdens are combining with labour shortages, lengthy administrative procedures, permanently high energy prices and high taxes in a blow to the future of our business location,” warns Marie-Christine Ostermann, head of the association of family business.

Stuck in the analogue era

For some though, the problem isn’t the regulation itself, it is the fact that there are not enough bureaucrats to deal with it all. After all, they argue, the rules are there to ensure that everyone’s concerns are accounted for.

“An unbureaucratic administration would be a nightmare,” protested economist Georg Cremer in a recent article for Die Zeit. “Sure, there can be too much of a good thing… (but) a prosperous social life is absolutely dependent on the government and administration being bound by law.”

Germany’s welfare system, Cremer points out, requires an army of bureaucrats who assess each claimant’s case based on things like the age of their children and their specific rental needs. “Undoubtedly, the welfare system is over-regulated”, he admits, but we also shouldn’t forget that any attempt to simplify it would make it less fair.

The Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaft, a left-wing economic think tank, has therefore argued that the answer to Germany’s woes is not to strip back regulation, but to employ more staff and push on with the digitisation of key services.

That sounds good in principle. But, when it comes to modernising Germany’s ossified public institutions, it is easier said than done.

A law passed in 2017 obliged local administrations to offer close to 600 of their services online by the end of 2022. A year past that deadline, just 81 of the services have been made available across the country.

The reason for the delays? Local governments are using software that is incompatible with the services developed by the federal government. Meanwhile bureaucrats often display a “grievous” lack of knowledge of how to use a computer, a recent analysis by consumer website Verivox found.

Bürgeramt

A man walks to the Bürgeramt, one of the many centres of German bureaucracy. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Martin Schutt

A German Javier Milei?

In September of last year, Scholz appeared to have finally recognised that things have gone too far.

Doing a good impression of an anarcho-capitalist then running to be president of Argentina, the chancellor gave a rousing speech to the Bundestag in which he called on the country to unite against the scourge of excessive regulation.

“Only together can we shake off the blight of bureaucracy, risk aversion and despondency that has settled over our country for years and decades,” he said. “It is paralyzing our economy and causing frustration among our people who simply want Germany to function properly.”

Two months later, Scholz announced he had reached a “historic” agreement with the federal states to speed up planning processes and to make life “palpably” easier for German citizens.

The agreement, since praised by the Normenkontrollrat as “having a lot of potential,” will mainly muzzle environmental agencies, thus allowing LNG terminals, wind turbines and motorways to be built through sensitive natural environments.

The jury is still out on whether it will simplify your everyday life.

At the start of this year more new laws came into force, including the government’s now notorious gas heating ban.

One that passed with less attention was a decision to abolish child passports. Under the old system you could take your child to your local Bürgeramt and they would give you a Kinderpass on the spot for €13.

Now, all children are required to have proper documents that are valid for six years. The hitch? The passport (which costs €40 and takes six weeks to arrive) is only valid as long as your child’s face remains recognisable.

“The new system makes absolutely no sense for children under six,” the lady at the Bürgeramt told me when I applied for my newborn baby’s first passport this week. “A baby’s face changes so much that you’ll have to get a new one after a year anyway.”

This article originally appeared in The German Review, a twice weekly newsletter full of analysis and opinion on German politics and society. You can sign up to read it here.

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