Can Germany's clogged-up bureaucracy be fixed?

Olaf Scholz has pledged to cut through bureaucracy to get the economy going again. If only it were that simple...

Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

In the summer of 2022, I attended a Q&A session that Olaf Scholz held with members of the public in the city of Magdeburg. Coming only a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of the questions centred on sanctions, energy costs and Berlin's response to the war.

But the response I found most revealing wa…