Germany, Decision-Making, Analysis

A Hundred Pages Before the Judges Meet

At the Federal Constitutional Court, one judge prepares each case as rapporteur. He or she writes a Votum, a draft decision with the supporting material, and sends it to the other judges before they deliberate. A judge told the political scientist Uwe Kranenpohl: mehr als hundert Seiten ist durchaus normal, more than a hundred pages is quite normal.

When the judges have reached their decision, they meet again to read the draft judgment. Kranenpohl writes: So ist mitunter die Leseberatung intensiver und länger als die eigentliche Entscheidungsberatung. The reading session is sometimes more intensive and longer than the deliberation on the decision itself.

The Opponent on Eighty Pages

For the 2006 World Cup, students at the German Sport University in Cologne analyzed all the teams in the tournament. The Swiss scout Urs Siegenthaler started the project. For the next European Championship, each team was presented with its strengths and weaknesses auf gut 80 Seiten, on a good 80 pages, in dossiers that the national coach Joachim Löw could consult.

The cooperation ended at the turn of 2022 to 2023. By the DFB’s count, about 1,000 students were trained, and the team worked on nine tournaments of the men’s national team. The DFB called its information elementar, essential, for the team’s match preparation.

Lessons From Afghanistan

The Bundestag can set up an Enquete-Kommission, a commission of inquiry, to prepare decisions on large and important subjects. Members of all parliamentary groups sit on it together with outside experts. Setting one up needs the support of at least a quarter of the members of the Bundestag.

The commission Lehren aus Afghanistan, lessons from Afghanistan, examined Germany’s twenty-year deployment there, from 2001 to 2021. It presented an interim report in February 2024. In January 2025 it adopted its final report, with 72 recommendations for Germany’s future role in international crisis management.

The Benefit Must Be Calculated So Others Can Follow

On 9 February 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the basic welfare rates known as Hartz IV were incompatible with the constitution. Much of its reasoning concerned how the amounts had been reached. The legislature must set the benefit “nachvollziehbar auf der Grundlage verlässlicher Zahlen und schlüssiger Berechnungsverfahren.” That means in a way others can follow, on the basis of reliable figures and consistent methods of calculation.

The rate for children had been set as a fixed reduction from the adult rate. According to the court, it rested on “einer freihändigen Setzung ohne empirische und methodische Fundierung,” a figure set freehand, without an empirical or methodical basis. Estimates made “ins Blaue hinein,” at random, are not a realistic calculation. The legislature had until 31 December 2010 to pass new rules.

Students Who Studied the Opponent

For about seventeen years, students of the German Sport University Cologne helped prepare the German national football team for its opponents. The Spielanalyse-Team Köln, the game analysis team, began as a pilot project. It supported the coaching staff with systematic computer and video analyses of each opponent. About 1,000 students were trained in the program. The cooperation ended at the turn of the year 2022–23.

Plan First, Then Build

In April 2013, the federal ministry for transport and building set up a commission of 36 senior experts on the construction of major projects. Its final report of June 2015 named three examples of projects that had gone far over cost and schedule: the new Berlin airport, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Stuttgart 21 railway station.

One of its ten recommendations, under the heading Erst planen, dann bauen, was this: Der Bauherr sollte mit dem Bau erst nach Erstellung eines zusammenfassenden Dokuments beginnen, das die lückenlose Ausführungsplanung für das gesamte Projekt sowie detaillierte Angaben zu Kosten, Risiken und zum Zeitplan enthält. (The client should start building only after a summary document has been drawn up.

It must contain the complete construction planning for the whole project and detailed information on costs, risks and schedule.) In December 2015, the federal cabinet adopted a ten-point action plan. Point two was Erst planen, dann bauen, plan first, then build.

A New Drug Must Prove It Is Better

Since 1 January 2011, every drug with a new active substance in Germany must prove its Zusatznutzen, its added benefit, when it comes on the market. The manufacturer submits a dossier. The Federal Joint Committee, the highest self-governing body of German health care, then decides whether the drug is better than the established treatment it chose for comparison.

If no added benefit is shown, statutory health insurance pays a price based on comparable drugs that already exist. New treatment methods face a similar test. In outpatient care, the Social Code allows them to be billed to statutory insurance only after the committee has recognized their benefit, auch im Vergleich zu bereits zu Lasten der Krankenkassen erbrachte Methoden, also in comparison with the methods the insurers already pay for.

Every Bill Must Name Its Problem

Bills from the German federal government open with a cover sheet in a fixed order. A bill from September 2026 is an example. Section A is Problem und Ziel, problem and goal. Section B is the solution and its benefit. Section C lists the alternatives. The sections that follow set out what the change will cost the budget, citizens and business.

Since 2011, an independent council, the Nationaler Normenkontrollrat, has checked these compliance costs in every federal draft law. Since 2015, the government has followed a rule of one in, one out. A new burden on business must in principle be balanced by an equal relief somewhere else.

Lehmann’s Note

Germany played Argentina in the World Cup quarterfinal on 30 June 2006, at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. The match went to penalties. Goalkeeper Jens Lehmann had a sheet of hotel notepaper with the names of the Argentine penalty takers, written in pencil. Goalkeeping coach Andreas Köpke had drawn the information from a database of 13,000 penalties kept by the Dutch coach Huub Stevens.

Köpke said: Wir haben nichts dem Zufall überlassen. “We left nothing to chance.” Utz Claassen bought the note for one million euros, and it is now shown at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn. Lehmann later admitted that the note was quite hard to read.

The expert report

A German decision of any weight is preceded by a Gutachten: an expert report, commissioned, written, and read before anything is decided.

Building disputes, medical questions, insurance claims, legislation. The report comes first and is a document in its own right, with an author who is answerable for it.

The diagnostic phase is not a stage of thinking. It is a deliverable.