On 30 November 2010 the arbitrator Heiner Geißler announced his ruling on Stuttgart 21, the planned underground main station. One of its conditions was a Stresstest. Deutsche Bahn had to prove that the new station could handle a timetable with 30 percent more capacity in the peak hour, with good operating quality. The railway ran the test, and the Swiss firm SMA und Partner audited it. On 29 July 2011 the results were presented and discussed in public, again with Geißler as moderator. The auditors found that the required 49 arrivals in the busiest hour could be handled. Opponents argued that the railway had not kept to its own rules. One group of critics said that the station could handle only 32 to 38 trains in the peak hour.
politics
The Train That Only Ran in Shanghai
The Transrapid maglev train was developed in Germany. Its only line in regular service opened at the end of 2002 in Shanghai. In Germany, three planned lines were abandoned after years of planning. In September 2006 a Transrapid on the test track in Emsland ran into a maintenance vehicle, and 23 people died. The cause was found to be human error. On 27 March 2008 the federal transport minister, Wolfgang Tiefensee, and the Bavarian premier, Günther Beckstein, ended the planned line to Munich airport. Its estimated cost had risen from 1.85 to 3.4 billion euros. Beckstein said: Damit hat sich das Thema leider erledigt. (With that, the matter is unfortunately closed.) The test track in Emsland was shut down at the end of 2011.
A Written Rule Against Rules
A 2006 baseline measurement found that German businesses carried about 49 billion euros a year in bureaucracy costs. In August 2006 a law created the Nationaler Normenkontrollrat, the National Regulatory Control Council. It checks the follow-up costs of every bill and regulation drafted by the federal government. In 2015 the federal government committed itself to a rule called “one in, one out”. If a new rule creates a burden for business, an equal relief must in principle be created elsewhere.
Failure as Opportunity
On 13 March 1998 the theater director and action artist Christoph Schlingensief founded a party called Chance 2000 in a circus tent at the Volksbühne in Berlin. It was first also known as the Partei der letzten Chance, the party of the last chance. Its slogan was Scheitern als Chance, failure as opportunity. For one action Schlingensief invited six million unemployed people to bathe in the Wolfgangsee in Austria. In the federal election of 1998 the party received 0.058 percent of the vote.
Leadership Again
On 11 February 2026 the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation handed its annual report to Chancellor Friedrich Merz. He said: Wir haben eine hoch innovative Forschungslandschaft in Deutschland. (We have a highly innovative research landscape in Germany.) Damit verbindet sich für uns der Anspruch, wieder Technologieführerschaft zu übernehmen. (With this comes our ambition to take on technology leadership again.) He added: Forschung ist kein Selbstzweck. (Research is not an end in itself.)
No Guarantee for the Flying Taxi
The company Lilium, based near Munich, developed an electric air taxi and employed about 1,100 people. In 2024 it asked for a federal guarantee of 50 million euros on a loan from the state development bank KfW. Bavaria was ready to guarantee another 50 million. The federal transport minister supported the aid. The FDP budget politician Frank Schäffler opposed it: Mit Steuergeldern des Bundes darf nicht spekuliert werden. (Federal tax money must not be used to speculate.) The budget committee of the Bundestag did not approve the guarantee, and the Bavarian money fell through with it. Lilium’s chief executive had written that the initial investments were simply too high to be carried by private money alone. On 28 October 2024 Lilium filed for insolvency.
No Plan B
On 28 February 2016, Chancellor Angela Merkel was interviewed on the talk show Anne Will about her refugee policy. The question was Wann steuern Sie um, Frau Merkel?, when will you change course, Mrs. Merkel? She replied that she was deeply convinced that the path she had taken was right. An English-language report quoted her as saying: “I have no plan B.” German reports give the remark only in indirect speech: Einen Plan B habe sie nicht, she had no plan B.
No Early Election Without a Procedure
The Bundestag has no right to dissolve itself. An early election is possible only by a defined route. One route is a vote of confidence. If the chancellor loses it, the federal president may dissolve the Bundestag within 21 days, on the chancellor’s proposal, but is not obliged to. This has happened in 1972, 1983, 2005 and 2024. On 16 December 2024, 207 of 707 members who voted expressed confidence in Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with 116 abstentions. On 27 December, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier cleared the way for a new election, which was held on 23 February 2025.
The Vote That Was Stopped
The governing coalition planned to pass the Building Energy Act, known as the heating law, on 7 July 2023. In late June, the coalition agreed on changes, and a synopsis of 94 pages followed on 30 June. A member of parliament, Thomas Heilmann of the CDU, applied to the Federal Constitutional Court. On 5 July 2023, the court ruled that the second and third readings could not take place that week. It doubted that the members could exercise their right to deliberate, given the strong compression of the timetable and the complexity of the bill.
A Fixed Place for the Future
Seit 2004 hat die Zukunft einen festen Platz im Deutschen Bundestag. Since 2004, the future has had a fixed place in the German Bundestag. This is how the Bundestag’s own chronicle introduces its Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. The council follows the federal sustainability strategy adopted in 2002. Its review of government bills has become part of the normal legislative process. The chronicle states the principle as responsibility for the people living today genauso wie für künftige Generationen, just as much as for future generations.