The Economist: Why has Germany become such an expert at self-sabotaging?

in The Twelve Labors of Asterix, animation from 1976. One of the feats a young Gaul must accomplish is obtain a government license. To do this, he must visit a huge office called “The Place That Drives You Crazy”. In a recent open letter, Wolfram Akthelm, president of the German Wind Energy Confederation, compared the irritating bureaucracy in Germany Modern to challenge Asterix.

One particular complaint was the unusual 150 permits required by Autobahn GmbH, the state-owned company that runs Germany’s much-talked-about roads, to move huge chunks of wind turbineslike their shovels.

Between byzantine rules about payload dimensions, faulty software, eternal roadworks, and a lack of professionals to handle claims, a backlog of nearly 20,000 applications has accumulated. A company that recently trucked a turbine from the port of Bremen to a site in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein found that although the distance was only 100 kilometers, the road limitations made the journey five times longer.

All countries have bureaucratic chaos. But Germany has an exceptional taste for self-sabotage. The cost of the battle between the Autobahn and wind turbines, for example, is not only economic but strategic.

An abrupt cut-off in Russian fuel imports last year meant the country had to struggle for energy, preferably domestic and renewable. Olaf Schulz, the state minister, said Germany needed to assemble three or four new wind turbines every day to reach its emissions reduction target. The current rate is just over one per day.

Other examples of private goals abound. The government’s decision, in the midst of the energy crisis, to put its last three nuclear power plants on standby has not benefited consumers energy For the state, nor the health of its citizens, as coal-fired thermal power plants had to be operated temporarily to meet demand.

Meanwhile, local governments often delayed issuing permits for the installation of equipment for the Solar energy And the wind, or to build transmission lines to distribute energy between the north of the country, with more wind, and the south, where there is more sun.

The tendency to self-harm transcends the energy sector. Germany’s insistence on a “Schöldenbergem”, or “debt brake” (which prevents the federal government from net borrowing above 0.35% of GDP), may satisfy the bourgeoisie with blame. But they reversibly prevented German authorities from borrowing to invest from 2012 to 2019, when interest rates were low.

The result is a congested road, national rail transport with one of the worst punctuality records in Europe and one of the lowest broadband Internet user rates in the EU. The spending cap has also forced local governments to use private funds outside the regular budget to pay for coronavirus relief, bolstering their promised defense and climate change goals.

The cheapness embarrassed German diplomats as well: the country’s air force, with insufficient funds, struggled to maintain the official air fleet; And since the end of June, the foreign minister, Analina Berbock, has twice been left unable to fly from airports abroad due to technical problems. Even more troubling is the gist of a series of decisions the country has apparently taken on autopilot and is now regretting.

For years German policymakers ignored warnings about Nord Stream 2, an $11 billion pipeline that risks locking the country into dependence on Siberian natural gas. It was completed a few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and has since suffered from explosions and will likely never be used.

Likewise, cautionary advice from Chinese electronics makers was ignored until this year. A recent report prepared by Der SpiegelThe German weekly magazine revealed that the cost of the national railway system, once the parts provided by the Chinese company Huawei, could be replaced, could exceed 400 million euros.

Less visible decisions weakened Germany’s position in more discreet ways. Two former intelligence chiefs complained that excessive scrutiny and political sensitivity made intelligence gathering difficult. Germany did not believe until the last moment that Russia would invade Ukraine. The lack of an agency specializing in cyberespionage may help explain this.

A recent decision by Germany’s highest court gave foreigners abroad the same protection from German surveillance that German nationals enjoy back home. No wonder Germany still relied on the Allies for information. Former presidents said of his services in a newspaper opinion piece Buildthe country’s daily tabloid, is in danger of becoming “toothless guard dogs with muzzles and iron chains”.

German bureaucrats don’t always make mistakes, and when they do, it’s sometimes not their fault: as in any other country, politics often trumps good policy-making.

Shutting down the nuclear power plants has been a holy mantra for Greens, while financial integrity was just as important to pro-business LDP members. These are the two small coalition parties that Schulz needs to appease. Apart from them, Scholz has to please the powerful states of Germany. By the way, the German press is excellent at making a teapot storm. Provocative provocation prompts politicians to respond by exaggerating legislation. One result is the massive paperwork required by the country’s highly vigilant data protection laws.

It is also true that when German officials fail, they take the most painstaking effort to make things right. The Scholz government, for example, is finally investing heavily in energy, transportation and information infrastructure. It quickly built alternative sources to replace Russian fuel, in addition to betting heavily on emerging technologies such as hydrogen. The coalition is even planning a bureaucracy reduction law that promises to cut red tape.

Berlin recently spent about €15 billion worthless on subsidies designed to entice Intel and TSMC, its two semiconductor makers, to build factories in the former East Germany. It remains to be seen if this is a reasonable move, but beyond the strategic goals the political logic is clear: A domestic economic stimulus could undo the vote on the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD), which is strong there.

The French Development Agency (AFD) wants to end immigration, even though German employers are desperate for workers; the weakening of the European Union, whose rules underpinned German prosperity for 60 years; Cutting off military aid to Ukraine is an invitation to the Russian armies to get closer to Germany. If the party gets what it wants, Germany could score three goals in the future.