Scholz proposes ending the "bureaucratic tangle" between administrations to get Germany out of the crisis at full speed

This year, German GDP will contract by at least 0.3%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast.. But it could do so by up to 0.7% according to the accounts of the Handelsblatt Research Institute.. Other institutions also see the recession coming, although they place the fall between those two values. For example, the Bundesbank sees Germany's GDP falling 0.5% this year, while the IfO Institute – another economic think tank – predicts a contraction of 0.4%.

Upon returning from the summer holidays and after meeting with his coalition government, Olaf Scholz launched fiscal savings valued at 32 billion euros from 2024 to 2028. This will come from the hand of a law with an eloquent name: “law of growth possibilities”. But that law is not everything. There is also an initiative to reduce the bureaucracy in the hands of the Ministry of Justice.

If that is the recipe to get out of the crisis, Scholz now wants to speed up cooking the anti-recession dish prepared by the German Executive. With what Scholz defends as the “Germany Plan”, the chancellor has gone on to urge the State administrations, also at the regional and local level, to apply the reforms and laws of the Executive.

“I invite all forces at the federal, state and local levels to join a 'Germany Pact' that will make our country faster, more modern and safer. Citizens are tired of stagnation. And I also. Let's tackle the tasks together,” Scholz defended in the Bundestag.. What the chancellor specifically asks of the country is, above all, “more speed.”

To do this, according to Scholz, “we must end the bureaucratic tangle” that has gripped the country, especially sectors such as construction.. That is why the head of the German Government wants to see the possibility that “digital construction requests” can be made in the country's 16 federal states, that an “end to the mountains of files to erect a mobile telephone antenna” or the elimination of “some permit requirements.”

This acceleration that Scholz wants to give with his 'Germany Plan' also affects the planned investment of the State of 18,000 million euros in social housing, 24,000 million euros in railway infrastructure or more than 110,000 million euros in measures aimed at climate protection.. These Government accounts, which emerge in debates such as the current one regarding the 2024 general budgets, have to become a reality and Scholz and company depend on many actors, perhaps too many.

To start the opposition. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister Christian Social Union (CSU) of Bavaria, which form the main opposition bloc in the Bundestag, have presidents in seven of Germany's 16 Länder. In addition, the CDU participates as a partner in Executives of two other federated states. Surely in view of the CDU's roots in the country, Scholz did not take long to meet with the head of the opposition, Friedrich Merz.

“We want measures to be taken quickly at many levels, whether in the municipalities, in the 16 federal states, in the Government and in other institutions to make growth possible,” Scholz said this week in a meeting with the Press Association Foreigner in the Federal Chancellery.

“This speed for politics is what I have proposed with the 'Germany Pact' and I am sure that we are going to be successful,” said Scholz who, without the patch he was wearing a few days ago, clearly saw that his country also It suffers economically for external reasons, for example, due to the consequences of Russia's illegal war against Ukraine or the slowdown in the Chinese economy.

It is currently doubtful that Xi Jinping's country can achieve the 5% GDP growth target that the Asian giant's authorities had set for 2023.. Germany, a country whose economy depends on exports, suffers especially when there is bad news internationally such as that which now refers to China.. Specifically, it is estimated that German GDP depends 2.7% on what happens in the Chinese economy, according to estimates by the Ifo Institute.

This is a major factor – and perhaps as persistent as the Russian war in Ukraine – leading Germany to drag its feet, now and perhaps next year as well.. Scholz's willingness to step on the growth accelerator matters little in this.

The “Germany Pact”, according to what Hubertus Bardt, economist and head of the Institute for the German Economy (IW), a study center based in Cologne (western Germany), tells EL MUNDO, is “an attempt to install a narrative in the that the Government is doing something because things like eliminating or accelerating permits, although something positive, are nothing really new.

For Bardt, the “Germany Pact” will not prevent 2023 from being a “difficult” year for Germany economically.. The IW also sees German GDP shrinking this year. Namely, 0.5%.