Berlin When the National Regulatory Control Council (NKR) was set up almost 16 years ago, it was considered a revolutionary idea that an independent body should from now on monitor the federal government’s practicable legislation.
Better regulation and reducing bureaucracy became top priority, and the NKR was settled directly in the Federal Chancellery. “That’s courage,” praised the first and so far only chairman of the committee, former Deutsche Bahn boss Johannes Ludewig.
The original idea was once worked out by the parliamentary managers of the Union faction and the SPD faction. That was Norbert Röttgen and Olaf Scholz, the current Federal Chancellor.
According to government circles, the members of the NKR were all the more astonished when, shortly after the formation of the traffic light coalition, it became known that Scholz was now throwing the paragraph guards out of the chancellery. Nobody thought such a step was possible, it said. The word “demotion” was mentioned.
In the future, according to the Chancellor’s organizational decree, the new Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) will be responsible for the committee. Neither the decree nor the draft law, which is now available, gives a reason for the “expulsion from the house”. However, the draft stipulates that the transfer of responsibilities is “designed to be permanent”.
On request, a government spokesman said that there was “a bundling of responsibilities” for the Office for Bureaucracy Reduction and for Better Regulation and the Regulatory Control Council in the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) with the responsibilities “for legal review and legal formality” that already existed there.
Further “important” for the Chancellor
In addition, it is stated: “It should be emphasized in this context that the NKR will continue to be an important body for the Federal Chancellor and for the entire federal government.” Nothing will change in terms of the tasks: As before, the NKR will continue to be part of the federal government’s legislative process integrated.
In a small question, the CDU MP Klaus-Peter Willsch also asked about the reasons for the NKR move. The answer of the federal government, which is available to the Handelsblatt, says: “It is an internal organizational decision of the federal government, which was made when the government was formed in the course of the reorganization of the departments.”
This also takes into account the fact that the BMJ has a “also cross-departmental” task, because the ministry, as a central office within the federal government, reviews the draft laws and ordinances from all departments in “legal systematic and legal form” terms and the other federal ministries in the preparation advise on their legislative projects.
Specifically, the Regulatory Control Council examines around 350 government projects every year in order to make the cost consequences of new legal regulations visible for companies, citizens and the administration.
The Minister says he is pleased that the NKR is now located “right in the center of the federal government’s legislation”.
(Photo: dpa)
The aim is to limit and reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and legal follow-up costs. Even if the reports came across as cumbersome, the NKR often put its finger in the wound. This is how the Council recently judged with regard to digitization: “Germany is, thinks and acts too complicated.”
With too much public scolding, the NKR chairman Ludewig deliberately held back, in order to keep the “channels of conversation” open within the government, as it was said. Critics accused him of having made himself comfortable with the former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). In September, Ludewig expressly thanked Merkel for the support “from the top of the government” for the committee.
There can be no more talk of that now. But what is behind the fact that the Federal Chancellery is handing over powers?
The SPD has always been strangers to the body, can be heard in government circles. Anyone who regulates a lot does not want to get price tags for it. Five years after the founding of the NKR, Merkel had already remarked that the “bold step” of examining bureaucracy was “not in the cradle of social democracy, so to speak”.
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In fact, the topic of digitization was outsourced from the Federal Chancellery and migrated to the Federal Ministry of Transport. The Federal Ministry of the Interior was given responsibility for the Federal IT Council. Apparently, the Chancellery with Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD) wants to concentrate on topics such as combating pandemics and climate protection, is one interpretation of these events. In return, important cross-cutting issues have been “pushed away”.
Or had the FDP insisted that responsibility for reducing bureaucracy be transferred to the BMJ because Minister of Justice Buschmann had to hand over responsibility for consumer protection to the Green Federal Ministry for the Environment? It is said that the minister did not insist on such compensation. The impulse came from the Chancellery.
Even experts should be surprised at the move. The Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) praised the “institutional anchoring at the highest level” in particular in an NKR balance sheet. That makes sense, “it guarantees that the issue of reducing bureaucracy as a cross-cutting task will not slip down the list of political priorities over time, but will be pursued with vigour.”
In the meantime, those affected are trying to see their own move as an opportunity. If Buschmann strategically expands the topic of reducing bureaucracy and better regulation, the Council could benefit.
Future NKR leadership is open
The minister promised that the government “does not want to create ever new bureaucratic hurdles through laws and regulations”. He is pleased that the NKR is now “located directly at the center of the federal government’s legislation”.
It is still unclear who will become NKR boss in the future. “Negotiations are currently taking place,” said the BMJ on request. It is already clear that the term of office will be limited to a maximum of ten years in order to ensure “reasonable rotation”.
The Union, once the initiator of the body, but now in the opposition, criticized Chancellor Scholz’s decision: “The NKR is an important body and should actually be strengthened,” said CDU MP Jan-Marco Luczak to the Handelsblatt.
In addition, reducing bureaucracy is a cross-cutting task. “The expulsion from the Chancellery is very questionable.” Now it depends on what the Federal Minister of Justice makes of it. Luczak says: “Perhaps the committee is better off with a committed liberal than with an unwilling chancellor.”
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