There are different judgments about the successes of the old federal government in efforts to reduce bureaucracy and better regulation.
In any case, under Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), she gave herself an often uncomfortable voice of common sense with the Regulatory Control Council: Among other things, the committee of ten independent experts has the task of examining all bills for bureaucracy and simplification potential.
Dietrich Creutzburg
Business correspondent in Berlin.
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The Regulatory Control Council owed its authority in dealing with the individual ministries to the fact that it was organizationally located directly at the Chancellery. However, according to Olaf Scholz (SPD) 's will, the Guardian Committee is now about to lose this authority: The new Chancellor no longer classifies the reduction of bureaucracy and better regulation as a top priority.
He shifts the field of activity and responsibility for the council to the Ministry of Justice.
This Wednesday, the cabinet wants to pass a bill that seals that.
The council will then no longer deliver its annual reports with analyzes and advice to boss level, which secured it increased attention under Merkel.
It will be "determined that the report will in future no longer be submitted to the Federal Chancellor, but to the Federal Government," says the draft that is available to the FAZ.
The law does not state the reason for the move
The draft law drafted in the house of Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) does not provide a substantive justification for the downgrading in the government hierarchy.
He only points out that this was already laid down in the so-called organizational decree by Scholz in December.
With the organizational decree, the Chancellery notifies the extent to which the ministries' tasks have changed at the end of the formation of the government.
In the Chancellery, instead of the bureaucratic watch, the Eastern Commissioner, who was previously in the Ministry of Economics, is allowed to work.
The current draft law states beyond this: The task of the council is to “support the federal government in implementing its measures in the areas of reducing bureaucracy and better regulation”.
And on the justification: "The National Regulatory Control Council will continue to perform this task in the future."
There will be a term limit
However, formal new regulations are also planned, which at least the previous head of the council, Johannes Ludewig, could easily understand in parts as a display of mistrust: the chairmanship will thus be limited by law to two terms in future. Ludewig, who holds a doctorate in economics, was born in 1945 and once served the government in his active professional life as State Secretary for Economic Affairs, Head of Department in the Chancellery and Head of Railway, in 2006, on the initiative of Merkel, became the founding chairman of the then new bureaucratic watchdog committee and held the position until the youngest Change of government.
Something like this should no longer be possible in the future, even if the council members all wanted it that way. Ludewig's deputy, who is currently running the business, is Sabine Kuhlmann, Professor of Political Science, Administration and Organization at the University of Potsdam. Other comrades-in-arms include Hanns-Eberhard Schleyer, the former general secretary of the trade, and the former Green politician Thea Dückert.
In addition to the current tasks, the council, which can fall back on an office of 15 (fully staffed) employees, has distinguished itself in recent years as a driver for the modernization and digitization of public administration.
To this end, he presented partly controversial, but also well-founded analyzes and recommendations for possible implementation strategies - supported by the diversity of competencies in the committee in which economic, legal, practical administrative and political expertise come together.
According to reports, the move to the Ministry of Justice ordered by Scholz caught the council off guard without warning.