That is at least suggested by the findings of a group of digital and transformation experts who have analyzed current legislative processes over the past four months under the patronage of Federal Chancellery Chief Helge Braun. Your suggestions on how good laws can be created will be officially presented next Friday.
A key result in advance: Even the stipulations in coalition agreements can mean that later in the legislative process, the search for the best possible and most effective solution to a problem is no longer at all.
“The lawyers in the ministries, that is, the authors of legal texts, are required to formulate the measures that have already been given as new regulations,” explains Susanne Bruch, who belongs to the group of experts involved in the federal program “Work4Germany” on the “redesign of the ministerial Law preparation ”collaborates. “The administration can often no longer consider implementation alternatives.” In the ministries, reports economist Bruch, a coalition agreement is therefore compared with a to-do list, which does not necessarily result in practical laws.
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Example from the coalition agreement of the previous legislature: corporate sanctions. Here the grand coalition has already agreed specific provisions, for example on internal investigations such as the VW diesel scandal. But there was strong criticism of the project. It was not implemented.
Complex challenges such as climate change or digitization
The expert group considers the fact that the legislative process has remained unchanged since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany to be questionable in view of an increasingly complex world. “Challenges such as climate change, digitization or demographic change can no longer be effectively solved by just one department,” explains innovation expert Jakob Häußermann. “Currently there are largely linear processes.”
The process has always been the case: after the political decision for a new law or a law to be amended, a ministry is responsible for the implementation of the regulatory project. As a result, a ministerial draft is created, which then goes into “departmental coordination” with the other ministries. In addition, there is a hearing in which associations and representatives of the federal states can submit statements. Finally, the federal government’s draft law is passed by a cabinet resolution
“Of course, the political coloring of the ministry will always have an impact,” says Häußermann. “But there should be early productive cooperation between the departments at the working level.”
That is why the group urgently recommends the introduction of “collaboration tools” in order to make coordination at a technical level possible at all. In addition, a neutral service unit of the federal government is necessary, which provides “knowledge and methods” for cross-departmental cooperation.
The actual legislative teams should be set up on an interdisciplinary basis. For example, with a view to a “digitization check”: In addition to lawyers, there should also be IT experts who can check new regulations to determine whether they can be implemented digitally, i.e. whether administrative processes can be automated. In their exploratory paper, the SPD, Greens and FDP had already promised to want to subject laws to such a check in the future.
Frustration at wasting resources
Another finding by the experts: the potential of participation is too seldom used in legislative processes. Companies, associations, civil society and science are often only heard at a stage in which the decisive course has already been set.
An intensive exchange for the most practical solution could hardly take place in this way. Frustration prevailed on all sides at the waste of resources. In addition, expert Bruch reports that in the ministries, participation is often only perceived as a “fig leaf”, which is due to the short deadlines set by politicians.
In fact, the German Association of Tax Consultants (DStV) complains about this. For example, the associations had recently received inappropriately short deadlines for comments at hearings of the Federal Ministry of Finance on proposed legislation, or their practical expertise was simply ignored.
The temporary lowering of sales tax rates is mentioned as a “negative example”. However, it is important to involve the associations and thus the practice, affirmed DStV President Torsten Lüth: “In this way, impending bureaucracy can be recognized at an early stage and remedied before it arises.”
The expert group also advocates moving away from the extensive written statements when participating – towards a dialogical exchange in order to weigh possible solutions. For this, too, the ministries would need methods, instruments and procedural models.
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