The administration in Germany is overwhelmed, says District Administrator Götz Ulrich – because of numerous crises, but also because of the traffic light policy. This must put wishes aside, otherwise there is a threat of an incapable state.
What is decided in Berlin is largely implemented by the municipalities. Districts such as the Burgenland district in Saxony-Anhalt organize public transport, refuse collection, and the payment of various social or asylum benefits. “Here you can see what still works – and what doesn’t,” says District Administrator Götz Ulrich. And this look fills him with concern at the moment.
“We’re slipping from one crisis to the next,” says Ulrich, CDU party leader and district administrator since 2014, at the meeting in the district administration in Naumburg. The 54-year-old says that staff has been constantly being brought together somewhere for years. This is not without consequences. If the health department needs 150 instead of 50 employees because of Corona, applications for the construction of a wind turbine have sometimes been left unanswered. “It was justifiable back then,” says Ulrich. “But it must not become permanent.”
employees long ago load limit
But that is exactly what happened. The federal government is helping with this. On the one hand, there is a lack of support, for example in asylum policy. “The districts in Saxony-Anhalt alone are sitting on 33 million euros in additional costs,” says Ulrich, who is also president of the district association. The vacant federal property for further accommodation, which Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has repeatedly promised, does not exist here. Also, no state or federal staff had been seconded to be able to look after more and more people.
On the other hand, the traffic light government is creating new construction sites. Ulrich cites the citizen income reform as an example. The law was promulgated shortly before Christmas 2022 after several amendments. Implementation: from January 1st. “Ultimately, we had a week to administrate it in such a way that the recipients still received their benefits under the new regulations a few days later,” says Ulrich. He had issued vacation bans and had to get employees out of vacation. That “of course didn’t cause any enthusiasm”.
His employees were overly committed at the beginning of the migration crisis, the pandemic and the Ukraine war. But they had long since reached the breaking point. It gets stuck on people “who always do it”. Many others are no longer available. They could be implemented, but they would then become ill. “We’re overwhelmed,” says Ulrich.
The federal and state governments could have simply increased the standard rates – and tackled all other changes to citizen income over the next few months. According to Ulrich, the reform of the housing benefit, the planned job center reform and above all the controversial basic child security threaten to further burden the local administration.
“The traffic light has to rethink”
Ulrich’s conclusion: “We have a bubble of professional politicians in Berlin who don’t reflect on their own ideas.” The traffic light must now rethink and consider “where ideas and desirable things can be put aside”.
It takes a look at reality: the coalition agreement may contain a lot of well-meant ideas, says Ulrich. “But since the Ukraine war, it has largely been shelved.” He is in favor of a moratorium on laws that would further burden local authorities financially and in terms of personnel. Otherwise nothing will work any more.
The Burgenland district is in the south of Saxony-Anhalt. This is where the world-famous Nebra Sky Disc was found. Germany’s best-known sparkling wine producer has its headquarters here, as does East Germany’s largest slaughterhouse. From Berlin’s point of view, the Profen opencast lignite mine plays an important role: the district receives 432.5 million euros from federal coal billions to cope with structural change.
The district has taken in an above-average number of Ukrainians since last year – and also had an above-average number of deaths in the Corona years. Aren’t the tasks here just a bit bigger – and are you therefore at the performance limit? District Administrator Ulrich denies that. The situation is similar elsewhere.
Survey: Majority thinks the state is overwhelmed
That at least coincides with the mood in the country. According to a survey by “Forsa” on behalf of the German Association of Civil Servants, 69 percent of people in Germany see the state as “overwhelmed”. It is the highest value in the survey conducted since 2019.
The doubts have long since not only affected politics, but also the economy and society itself. The sociologist Andreas Reckwitz recently said in “Stern” that the promise of progress and growth of modernity had “cracked”.
Reckwitz’ colleague Armin Nassehi attested that the Federal Republic was “fundamentally overwhelmed” in dealing with crises during the Corona years. The theologian and prelate of the Evangelical Church, Anne Gidion, stated in April that society had become “exhausted” and “thin-skinned”.
And when the city council of the city of Burg in Jerichower Land wrote a letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz in July to demand a change in asylum policy, a leading SPD representative of all people said that politics was “simply no longer accepted” locally.
Above all, however, the Union has recently been using this analysis. For example, when parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn accuses the traffic light of overtaxing people with an alleged “culture war” between the heating law and cannabis legalization.
threat to the rule of law
Götz Ulrich isn’t someone who stands in the way on principle. In 2015, he held onto an asylum shelter despite death threats, protests and an arson attack. In a dispute in the “Zeit” he just represented those CDU local politicians who do not want to work with the AfD under any circumstances. And a few days after meeting with tagesschau.de Ulrich accompanies the first CSD of the Burgenland district as patron.
Ulrich says that his criticism is not about party politics, but about maintaining the free and democratic basic order. He doesn’t call the AfD by name, but says: If parties came to power “that question the overall order,” then everything he’d achieved as a local politician would be jeopardized. In East Germany, the right-wing extremist party is currently stronger than ever.
But how is the state’s crisis of confidence to be resolved? Ulrich advocates “focusing on what is absolutely necessary” for the time being – on the energy transition, the shortage of skilled workers, but also the climate crisis. The latter, in particular, cannot be “put aside”, Ulrich believes. He himself is currently making sure that communities in his district can benefit more from the expansion of solar and wind power.
In Berlin, however, one must see to it that relief is created elsewhere and that other administrative structures are not overturned. After all, the state shouldn’t get to the point where something is promised in Berlin “that we can’t administer locally,” says Ulrich. “That would be a threat to our rule of law.”