Berlin Shorter planning and approval procedures are a core project of the new federal government. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) announced in January after a cabinet meeting “presentable results” in the course of the first half of the year. Now things are moving.
The SPD politician Mathias Stein outlines the first points of how planning law should be simplified in order to speed up investment projects. There is “a great need for action, which is why we as the traffic light coalition have set ourselves ambitious goals to significantly reduce the duration of administrative procedures,” said the deputy spokesman for transport policy for the SPD parliamentary group in the Handelsblatt.
Stein is also reacting to an initiative by Brandenburg’s Economics Minister Jörg Steinbach. Against the background of the sluggish approval process for the Tesla plant near Berlin, the SPD politician had proposed that the approval law be changed in such a way that construction planning changes should be possible in the ongoing approval process without the process having to be completely restarted.
According to Stein, repeated interpretation, objection and reply loops should be avoided in the future. “In the coalition agreement, we therefore provided that public participation procedures no longer have to be repeated in full after plan changes in an ongoing approval procedure,” explained the SPD politician. “Instead, we are pursuing a more pragmatic approach in which only newly affected parties are involved and objections are only permissible against changes to the plan.”
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The Liberals also see a need for action. “The FDP is available for everything that speeds up and simplifies the process and does not come at the expense of third parties,” said the building and housing policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, Daniel Föst, the Handelsblatt. “We also have to be more flexible during the process and construction.”
The Greens economic politician Dieter Janecek welcomed Steinbach’s initiative, which made “an important point”. “Even with projects that have gone well so far, we have to see where we can get even better,” Janecek told Handelsblatt. The Greens politician sees accelerating planning as one of the central projects of the new federal government, which is essential for the success of the energy transition and the ecological transformation of the economy.
Understanding Tesla criticism
Janecek said; “For this we need agile processes with which we can also react unbureaucratically to changing plans or framework conditions”. Formal errors must also be better “healable” in the ongoing process.
The date for the official start of production at the Tesla car factory in Grünheide is still open because the approval process has not yet been completed. When visiting a folk festival on the construction site of his plant in October, CEO Elon Musk had hoped that the first cars could roll off the assembly lines by December at the latest.
>> Read here: Interview with Brandenburg’s Economics Minister: “Elon Musk is a total workaholic – I don’t know when the man sleeps”
But when exactly the state of Brandenburg will decide on the environmental approval is unclear after the end of a digital hearing by critics. So far, Tesla has built several early approvals. Environmental groups have tried several times to overturn early approvals. Among other things, they fear problems with drinking water. Tesla denies this.
Steinbach showed understanding for Tesla’s criticism of the progress of the approval process for the Grünheide factory. There are bureaucratic hurdles in this country, “which are sometimes difficult for a foreign investor to understand,” said Steinbach.
Hüther: Bureaucracy slows down start-ups
The economist Michael Hüther sees it the same way. “Not only companies have to be agile in the 21st century – the administration and thus the approval procedures have to do the same,” said the director of the German Economic Institute (IW) of the Handelsblatt.
“The administration should be geared to the pace and the way companies work, not the other way around,” emphasized the economist. “This includes the fact that construction planning changes can be made in an ongoing process without the process having to be rolled out again.” If Germany wants to stay on the ball economically and achieve climate neutrality in the coming decades, it needs money and speed – bureaucracy counteracts both.
According to Hüther, there is good empirical evidence that bureaucracy costs money and time: “In the USA, for example, the bureaucracy involved in founding a company is 33 percent lower than in Germany,” said the IW boss. “If we were as fast as the United States, an estimated 15 percent more start-ups would be possible.”
Faster processes also had a positive effect on the investments that are essential for the ecological transformation. “If it took us just one day less to set up a company, that could enable two billion euros in direct investments. These two example calculations from our company show how great the economic potential of faster and more efficient processes is.”
The construction industry advocates changes to the law with a sense of proportion. “Procedures must be flexible enough to allow changes to be made to a reasonable extent while the procedure is ongoing,” said Tim-Oliver Müller, Managing Director of the Main Association of the German Construction Industry, the Handelsblatt. If projects are subsequently expanded on a larger scale, for example with additional buildings, there are “natural limits” to the whole thing.
Müller also sees the client as having a duty to make it clear “what he wants” right from the start. “That should be the rule and not the exception.” The construction of a building is a highly complex matter: the requirements, the environment – and the interaction of calculations, products and trades. Subsequent changes to the planning are always expensive, take time and are usually frustrating for everyone involved, says Müller.
However, the desire for improvements has a catch. Planning law is largely a matter for the federal states, said the FDP politician Föst. Therefore, homework has to be done at all levels. It has to be done quickly now. “Otherwise we prevent more than we enable.”
More: Interview with Brandenburg’s Economics Minister: “Elon Musk is a total workaholic – I don’t know when the man sleeps”