The Deutschlandtakt is a plan for an integrated national rail timetable with half-hourly connections. It was supposed to be largely in place by 2030. In March 2023, the federal government’s rail commissioner, Michael Theurer, said on ZDF television that full implementation could take until 2070. He called it a Jahrhundertprojekt, a project for a century. Opposition critics called it an admission of failure.
politics
No Removal Without a Successor
Under Article 67 of the Basic Law, the Bundestag can remove a chancellor only by electing a successor at the same time, with an absolute majority. This is the constructive vote of no confidence. It answers the Weimar Constitution, which allowed parliament to bring down a government without electing a new one. The vote has been tried twice. In 1972, Rainer Barzel failed against Willy Brandt. Ten years later, Helmut Kohl replaced Helmut Schmidt.
When the Future Seemed Plannable
Willy Brandt formed his first government in 1969. The head of his Chancellery, Horst Ehmke, and the head of its planning staff, Reimut Jochimsen, wanted a Rationalisierung der Politik, a rationalization of politics, built on modern data processing. The civil service increasingly rejected the planners, and part of the public mocked them. The historian Andreas Rödder describes the new Chancellery building, commissioned by Ehmke in 1970, as a product of the era’s technocratic belief that the future could be planned and shaped. Around 1973 that belief collapsed. Contemporaries called the shift the Tendenzwende, the change of trend.
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.
Subject to Funding
In their coalition agreement of 2025, CDU, CSU and SPD promised to lower the electricity tax für alle so schnell wie möglich auf das europäische Mindestmaß, for everyone as quickly as possible to the European minimum. In the summer of 2025, the cabinet decided to lower it only for industry and agriculture. In early July, the coalition committee confirmed the decision. Households and small businesses got no cut. The German Retail Federation and the wholesale federation BGA called the decision a Wortbruch, a breaking of one’s word. Chancellor Friedrich Merz answered: Wir können nur das Geld ausgeben, das wir haben. We can only spend the money we have. He pointed to a condition in the agreement. All plans in the coalition agreement are subject to funding.
The Price of Public Broadcasting
Every German household pays the Rundfunkbeitrag, the broadcasting fee. Its amount is set in three steps. The public broadcasters report their financial needs. An independent commission, the KEF, checks whether the needs were calculated in line with the principles of economy and thrift. Then the state parliaments must adopt the figure. For 2021 the KEF proposed a rise of 86 cents, from 17.50 euros to 18.36 euros a month. Fifteen states approved it. Saxony-Anhalt did not. On 20 July 2021, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that this violated the freedom of broadcasting, and the court ordered the fee of 18.36 euros to apply provisionally. A state may depart from the commission’s figure only with the agreement of all the states. In November 2024, ARD and ZDF went to court again, seeking 18.94 euros from 2025. The court heard the case on 23 June 2026. As of October 2026, it had not yet ruled.
The Fight over Fiscal Equalization
In March 2013 Bavaria and Hesse took the Länderfinanzausgleich, the system by which richer German states pay money to poorer ones, to the Federal Constitutional Court. In 2012 the system had redistributed 7.9 billion euros, and Bavaria paid about half of it. The two state leaders, Horst Seehofer and Volker Bouffier, called the system unsolide, ungerecht und leistungsfeindlich, unsound, unjust and hostile to effort. Bouffier said: Wer sich anstrengt, muss auch etwas davon haben. Whoever makes an effort must also get something out of it. In December 2016 the chancellor and the state leaders agreed on a new system from 2020, in which the federal government took on a larger share. In September 2017 Bavaria and Hesse withdrew their lawsuit.
The Longest Government Formation
Germany elected a new Bundestag on 24 September 2017. CDU, CSU, FDP and the Greens then held exploratory talks, Sondierungsgespräche, for about four weeks. On 19 November 2017, the FDP ended them. CDU, CSU and SPD then held their own exploratory talks. They finished them on 12 January 2018 with a 28-page paper. On 7 February 2018 they agreed on a coalition agreement. The SPD put it to a vote of its members, and 66.02 percent of those who voted approved. On 14 March 2018 the Bundestag elected Angela Merkel chancellor for the fourth time. The Bundestag counted 171 days since the election, a new record. The previous record was 86 days, in 2013.
Twenty-Four Hours to Comment
Before the federal government sends a bill to the Bundestag, the ministry asks associations for their opinion. This is the Verbändeanhörung. The rules of procedure of the federal ministries require that associations be involved in good time, but they leave the length of the deadline to the ministry. In August 2023, the Chancellery gave associations a little more than 24 hours to comment on an 88-page draft of the law on the foreign intelligence service. Reporters Without Borders called it ein Trauerspiel, a sad spectacle. The critics asked for Gründlichkeit vor Schnelligkeit, thoroughness before speed. A paper published by the association Mehr Demokratie in May 2024 looked at 496 bills. The average deadline was 15.4 working days. The authors proposed at least four weeks.
Better Not to Govern
Shortly before midnight on 19 November 2017, the FDP declared the exploratory talks for a Jamaica coalition with the CDU, the CSU and the Greens a failure. The party leader, Christian Lindner, said the four partners had not built a Vertrauensbasis, a basis of trust. He said the FDP had made many offers of compromise. But after weeks of talks there was still ein Papier mit zahllosen Widersprüchen, offenen Fragen und Zielkonflikten, a paper with countless contradictions, open questions and conflicting goals. Where agreements did exist, they were erkauft mit viel Geld der Bürger oder mit Formelkompromissen, bought with a lot of the citizens’ money or with formula compromises. A Formelkompromiss is a form of words that covers a disagreement without settling it. Then Lindner said: Es ist besser, nicht zu regieren, als falsch zu regieren. It is better not to govern than to govern wrongly.