Dossier Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy per se fulfills important economic functions: It helps to ensure legal certainty, planning security and equal treatment. However, despite several bureaucracy relief laws, entrepreneurs have the feeling that the bureaucratic burden on the part of the state, but also on the part of the self-governing organizations of the economy, standardization institutes and professional associations, is constantly growing.
IfM-Position Paper
In need of a paradigm shift – Rethinking bureaucracy reduction and regulation policies
Highly complex economies and societies need regulations to ensure their ability to function. These ensure legal and planning certainty and prevent corruption. However, especially in the view of SMEs, the "optimal" level of bureaucracy – which is difficult to determine empirically – seems to be far exceeded by now.
According to a recent study by IfM Bonn (Holz, Icks & Nielen 2023), the bureaucratic burden on companies goes well beyond the statistically measured time and cost expenditures.
Figure of the months
For
75.9 %
of industrial companies, the EU internal market is the most important sales market, and for 69.5 % the most important procurement market.
Policy Brief "Entrepreneurship in Focus"
A paradigm shift for a noticeable reduction in bureaucracy
Companies perceive a significantly increased bureaucratic burden, where psychological costs, opportunity costs and indirect follow-up costs are also highly relevant. Bureaucracy reduction and regulation in Germany should be considered more ho-listically, strategically and in terms of a paradigm shift - away from the idea of control and towards more practicality, reason-ableness and proportionality of legislation.