West Germany introduced compulsory oil stocks in 1966. Since 1978, the stocks have been held by the Erdölbevorratungsverband, the Petroleum Stockholding Association, a public body to which refiners and importers must belong. Section 3 of the Oil Stockholding Act requires it to hold stocks equal to at least 90 days of average daily net imports. The obligation was raised from 80 to 90 days in 1998. The members’ fees come to about 0.3 cents per liter of fuel or heating oil. The stocks have been released six times: in the Gulf crisis of 1990 to 1991, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, in the Libya crisis of 2011, during low water on the Rhine in 2018, in March 2022, at the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and in March 2026. That time, the federal government released 19.5 million barrels as part of a joint release by the International Energy Agency.
The Gas Emergency Plan
The German gas emergency plan, the Notfallplan Gas, has three stages: the Frühwarnstufe, early warning, the Alarmstufe, alert, and the Notfallstufe, emergency. The early warning stage was declared on 30 March 2022, and a crisis team was set up. On 23 June 2022, after Russia sharply cut deliveries through Nord Stream 1, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs declared the alert stage. In the emergency stage, the Federal Network Agency would decide who receives how much gas. Private households, hospitals and other protected customers would be supplied until the very end.
Gas Without an Alternative
In March 2022, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs put Russia’s current share of German gas imports at 55 percent. Russia also supplied about half of Germany’s coal imports and about 35 percent of its oil imports. By mid-April, the share of Russian gas had fallen to about 35 percent. On 25 March 2022, the Bundestag passed a gas storage law. It fixed fill levels by date: 80 percent on 1 October, 90 percent on 1 November and 40 percent on 1 February. The law still sets fill levels by date. Since 2025, an ordinance has lowered the target for 1 November to 80 percent, and to 45 percent for some storage sites.
The reserve was written into law only after the gap had opened. It took the form of percentages tied to dates in the calendar.
Early Warning by Law
Since 1 May 1998, Section 91 of the Stock Corporation Act has required the management board to take suitable measures. In particular, it must set up a monitoring system, damit den Fortbestand der Gesellschaft gefährdende Entwicklungen früh erkannt werden, so that developments that threaten the company’s survival are detected early. The rule came with the KonTraG, the law on control and transparency in business. Since 1 January 2021, the restructuring law StaRUG has set out the duty of early crisis detection in statute for the managers of all legal entities, whatever their legal form.
The Plan Post
In the German civil service, a permanent position is a Planstelle, a plan post. It is a post provided for in the budget plan. Section 49 of the Federal Budget Code is short: Ein Amt darf nur zusammen mit der Einweisung in eine besetzbare Planstelle verliehen werden. (An office may be conferred only together with assignment to an available plan post.) A civil servant who is promoted can be placed in the new plan post with retroactive effect of at most three months.
The Start-Up Grant
Unemployed people in Germany who start a full-time business can apply for the Gründungszuschuss, a start-up grant paid for up to 15 months. Under Section 93 of the Third Book of the Social Code, they must present a statement from an expert body on the Tragfähigkeit, the viability, of the business. A chamber of commerce, a chamber of crafts or a tax adviser can give it. The founder hands the expert body a set of documents. The Federal Employment Agency’s model letter lists them: a business plan, a plan of capital needs and financing, a forecast of sales and profitability, a CV and proof of qualifications. Whether the grant is paid is at the agency’s discretion.
Work Preparation
Arbeitsvorbereitung, work preparation, is a fixed term in German manufacturing and construction. In construction, it is the planning stage that coordinates resources, tasks and work steps, so that the work on site runs efficiently and without disruption. The construction reference work Bauprofessor calls careful work preparation decisive for the success of a building project. It warns that leaving it out can cost five percent or more of the result on a site. In industry, Arbeitsvorbereiter, work preparer, is a job title of its own. One way into the job is a twelve-week course to become a REFA technician.
The General Staff
The Prussian General Staff existed unofficially from 1806 and was formally established by law in 1814. In peacetime, it was responsible for the continuous study of all aspects of war and for drafting and reviewing mobilization and campaign plans. Under Helmuth von Moltke, its chief from 1857, it studied the railway network and built it into its deployment plans. After the First World War, Article 160 of the Treaty of Versailles ordered: “The Great German General Staff and all similar organisations shall be dissolved and may not be reconstituted in any form.” The army continued the work under a new name, the Truppenamt.
Planned Cost Accounting
German cost accounting has a method named for the plan: Grenzplankostenrechnung, flexible marginal planned-cost accounting. It was developed in the late 1940s and the 1950s by the automotive engineer Hans Georg Plaut and the academic Wolfgang Kilger. Plaut published two articles on it in 1953 in the Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft. As the name says, the method is built on planned costs. It is still taught at universities in the German-speaking countries and has been described as the standard for cost accounting in Germany.
The Match Plan
German football coaches erstellen einen Matchplan, they draw up a match plan for each game. The sports writer Christoph Biermann used the word as the title of his 2018 book, Matchplan. Die neue Fußballmatrix. In 2021, a column in the weekly Der Freitag teased the coaches. When journalists press them about their plan, the column said, they explain it in a way that nobody is likely to understand.