"We now need to take a more pragmatic approach"

Bureaucracy does not arise in a vacuum or out of ill will. Why is it so bureaucratic in this country?

Dr Sonja Boss: It has to do with the fact that, as a democracy in Germany, we have three powers and, as a member of the European Union, we are also integrated into this larger circle. Of course, there are laws that regulate how we live together. And I also think it's important to emphasise that the legislator basically means well when it introduces a law. They don't get up in the morning and ask themselves: Which industry am I upsetting today? The question afterwards is implementation - it's the how, not the whether, that makes it difficult. And this has been particularly true in recent years.

Because we Germans, and that was one of the conclusions of the panel here at the summit, have a particular tendency to want to do everything right - that's our German DNA. We want to map every single case and that is sometimes objectively impossible. There is a lack of courage to allow and endure such a gap.

And how do these bureaucratic obstacles affect the day-to-day work of creative companies?

Boss: Because there is a legal obligation to implement them - and they are also subject to fines. Time is lost for the implementation of bureaucratic measures that could actually be spent on day-to-day business and creative work. And this of course massively hinders creativity and inhibits the creative flow.

What specific examples do you bring from your work practice? What issues end up on your desk?

Boss: I deal with EU directives and the question of how to transpose them into national law. I translate what a European law means for German daily newspaper publishers. That's a big part of my job.

The deforestation regulation, for example, has been much discussed. It aims to ensure that the supply chain is traceable from the moment the tree is felled to the end consumer. What also concerns many companies is the Whistleblower Protection Act, i.e. the so-called Whistleblower Directive, which means that offences within a company can be reported anonymously.

These are good and correct approaches per se. But it means that companies have to maintain an insane amount of infrastructure. For example, every company with more than 50 employees is now obliged to implement this directive. They can either do this themselves or they can outsource it to an external service provider, who then charges 200 euros a month for it and if a case comes in, they charge another 500 euros. That's how costs are incurred.

One starting point that was discussed in the panel was threshold values. Can you elaborate on that?

Boss: Exactly, the laws usually have these thresholds, for example for small and medium-sized enterprises - this means that laws only apply once a company reaches a certain size. The legislator has already recognised that it would be too much bureaucracy for smaller companies. In my opinion, however, these thresholds are now too low and we should set them higher. That would be a small and quick remedy.

Do you have any other ideas on how cutting red tape could work now and quickly?

Boss: There are different ideas from different authorities. Working with exceptional cases on a large scale is definitely a very quick and simple step. We just have to see whether we can cope with our German DNA, which always wants to record every single case.

And that is of course also a political question. Do we live in times that allow us to regulate everything down to the last detail? That is certainly desirable and is always the goal. But we now need to take a more pragmatic approach. We don't necessarily have to ignore cases - it's more about starting the legislative process, waiting, evaluating and then making improvements.