Mr. Silberbach, you have just formulated a drastic warning: The “shop” – the state – threatens to blow up in our faces.

What do you mean by that?

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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We have been warning for many years that policies of under-stretching in the public sector are completely misguided and will eventually reach their limits.

Already today, 330,000 employees are missing to fulfill all politically specified tasks in a meaningful way.

At the same time, 1.3 million of the approximately 5 million employees and civil servants will retire in the next ten years alone.

The staff gap is getting bigger every day - at the same time, the new federal government is planning an ambitious move: climate protection, digitization, diversity and more.

We're going with you.

But simply adding more tasks without fundamentally improving the equipment of the public service will not work.

But does the shop fly right around our ears?

I stand by this exaggerated formulation.

Because there is also a connection between frustrating experiences that citizens have with poorly equipped, cumbersome-looking authorities and a sometimes alarmingly declining trust in the state's ability to act and politics.

Ultimately, this is even reflected in the increasing number of those hideous cases of brutalization and violence that police officers, paramedics or firefighters experience on their missions.

We are witnessing a dangerous disrespect for those who work in the service of our community.

And an important cause of this problem is that politically all too often more is promised than the public administration can objectively deliver.

Where do you see this happening?

We are dealing here with a recurring variety of political irresponsibility.

It is very current in the debate about compulsory vaccination announced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).

I just don't understand why the government isn't presenting its own draft law on this, but ducks away.

And if you classify the obligation to vaccinate as an important tool for fighting the pandemic, nobody understands why the Bundestag does not decide on it as soon as possible in a special session - like in the financial crisis, when the survival of banks was at stake.

And the problem for the state?

If such a vaccination were to be compulsory, it would have to be clarified precisely how it would be implemented: with what instruments, what sanctions, what bureaucracy? Scholz simply says it should be unbureaucratic. But what does that mean, please? Will it be compulsory to vaccinate without consequences for those who refuse? Then the state just demonstrates its impotence once more. Or should the public order office ring every doorbell and check vaccination certificates? But then I want to know how much personnel expenditure is involved in calculating this. And also: what are the employees' hands on if someone doesn't open the door: Should they just keep going or gain access? A policy that does not bother to answer such questions is window dressing at the expense of the public service,its employees and trust in the state.

So you are against compulsory vaccination?