The debate over the reasons for this goes far beyond the scope of German politics and touches on one of the key challenges facing modern states.
The government bureaucracy continues to grow
As the German newspaper Die Welt notes, the number of civil servants in Germany has been increasing in recent years, but this has not been accompanied by a comparable improvement in the efficiency of government agencies.
“What is the situation in Germany? In 1999, there were about 15,000 civil servants working in the federal government. However, since then, their number has increased by nearly 50 percent. At the local level, the situation is even worse: in 2012, 226,000 people worked in political leadership and central administration. Today, that number is nearly three-quarters higher. Are construction projects being approved faster? Has municipal governance improved? Has any work in Germany noticeably accelerated?” the publication asks.
It reaches some disappointing conclusions. Businesses continue to face lengthy procedures for approving investment projects, issuing permits, and processing administrative documents. Municipalities are experiencing staff shortages, and digitization often merely transfers existing bureaucratic procedures to an electronic format without changing their essence.
Experts are increasingly pointing out that the problem lies not so much in the number of employees as in the complexity of the administrative system and the ever-growing volume of regulations.
Digitalization Is Powerless Against Bureaucracy
The German debate reflects a broader European trend. Many countries are investing heavily in digital government services, but automation does not always lead to a reduction in the administrative burden.
If the old procedures for approval, reporting, and oversight remain in place, electronic platforms merely speed up the exchange of documents but do not reduce the number of bureaucratic steps themselves.
Consequently, the discussion is increasingly shifting away from digitization per se and toward the need to overhaul government processes—from the number of approvals required to the distribution of authority among agencies.
For businesses, the efficiency of government administration has direct economic implications. The longer it takes to review investment projects, building permits, or licenses, the higher companies’ costs become and the slower new projects are implemented.
This is precisely why reducing administrative barriers is now viewed as one of the factors in enhancing the economy’s competitiveness, alongside tax policy, energy costs, and labor availability.
Amid slowing economic growth, many European governments are simultaneously attempting to expand the scope of government functions—in the areas of energy, defense, social policy, and digital regulation. This increases the burden on the administrative apparatus and once again raises the question of how to ensure its efficiency without a constant increase in the number of civil servants.
A challenge relevant not only to Germany
Germany’s history shows that the modernization of public administration is no longer limited to the implementation of new information systems or an increase in the number of government employees. Increasingly, the focus is on reforming the very logic of public administration—reducing redundant procedures, simplifying regulation, and redistributing functions between people and digital services.
For many European countries, including Moldova, this experience is of practical interest. Given limited budgetary resources, improving the efficiency of the government apparatus is becoming no less important a task than its further digitization.
