[hrbf]

I believe the author’s point to be that due to no English translation available, the already involved process in Germany becomes unnecessarily hard for a non-native speaker. As a native speaker I can attest to lots of gobbledygook official documents I had to deal with in my lifetime. The amount of paper you have to deal with when running a business is truly staggering.

Bureaucracy is indeed a rampant runaway force in Germany. Every attempt at reducing it will inevitably create more of it, because, in the bureaucratic mind, you now have to create an oversight committee to control the adherence to the decree of reduction.

I believe this to be a universal constant: you cannot task bureaucracy to with making itself superfluous. Digital services are a decade behind here, since most bureaucrats fight tooth and nail against them, for fear of losing their job.

[chironjit]

I think the issue is actually much worse than just making it harder for someone to start a company.

The primary issue i see with Germany are that the issues raised by the writer is not just limited to starting a company. It is EVERYWHERE.

The problem is that whether Germans realise or not, it profoundly affects them in many ways.

Because of the archaic system of doing things, everything takes time. You have to set aside time to do these things. Because of how bureaucratic every process is, each staff can only see a limited number of people.

You constantly have to refresh some archaic website to find a slot. Slots are usually all gone in an instant, and your luck depends on someone cancelling or maybe them adding an extra staff for that day.

Often, there is no way to submit applications online, even for things that may logically be better off being submitted online.

The problem i see is: 1) It affects everything, including healthcare. Waiting times for public healthcare, government support etc, are through the roof. 2) Often times, this time blowout issue is blamed on something else (such as refugees, etc). There may be some truth to it, but as an outsider I see how easy it feels to blame some hapless refugee than admitting that system was already at its seams prior. 3) This system disadvantages the less-well-off - being able to pay for it lets you buy your way out of the hassle. 4) Unfortunately, most Germans view this from some perspective of denial, helplessness while others get defensive when you argue about it.

[ido]

There’s also a lot of resistance to digitalization- for example I work with some government organizations (both federal and state) and they’d often require me to send some documents printed out and signed in the post. There is absolutely no reason why in the 21st century you shouldn’t be able to accept email documents digitally signed instead.

[hrbf]

That’s what I meant with digital services being a decade behind here. I attribute it to extreme conservatism to preserve jobs that aren’t in fact necessary. Bureaucracy is incapable of seeing beyond itself, just like so many other areas are as well.

[mkl95]

Since one of the EU's goals is to make it easier to do business, I would expect the EU to fund translations to all its official languages (with English among them). As far as I know no country has requested it.

[_vbnz]

The same EU that introduced the GDPR, Link Tax, Cookie Law, etc. as "easier to do business", really?

The EU is to the German establishment what the USSR was to the Russian establishment.

[AlbertoGP]

I agree with your general point that the EU does not know how to make life easy for small businesses.

However, your examples are not the best: GDPR and Cookie Law are actually quite good. Regarding the GDPR, I like being able to obtain all the data a business has on me, and to demand that it be deleted. As for the Cookie Law, it’s only a problem for websites using them for tracking people: you are not required to get agreement from the user to use cookies for things like logging in.

Those annoying pop-ups almost everywhere are a disinformation campaign to turn users against that law.

Now, there are other things like the Link Tax you mentioned and the MOSS (VAT on digital services), which means having to charge/pay different VAT rates depending on the user’s country (which you need to justify with 3 different pieces of evidence) that are a big burden on small businesses while not affecting much the big ones to which they were supposedly directed.

MOSS: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-digit...

The end effect of those Bizantine regulations is that big companies just use them as loopholes while small businesses get weighted down with them.

Your last line summarizes it well: “The EU is to the German establishment what the USSR was to the Russian establishment.”

[_vbnz]

> The end effect of those Bizantine regulations is that big companies just use them as loopholes while small businesses get weighted down with them.

Yeah, this is exactly the issue.

I work in Finance and the right to be forgotten / right to deletion is a pain, as it doesn't apply to invoices (needed for financial reporting for 10 years), but can apply to the user ID, etc. which makes it tricky. It's doable in a big company though, even if it's a headache.

But for example, I live in a housing co-operative, and there the laws really become a pain. Like we wanted to use the CCTV to better enforce treatment of communal areas, but you can't without a police report, etc., and we wanted to build a better portal for residents but then there are lots of issues with the GDPR, etc. - like all just little hurdles that get in the way of iteration and innovation. Especially for something like that which is basically part-time among residents.

[sooyoo]

> But for example, I live in a housing co-operative, and there the laws really become a pain. Like we wanted to use the CCTV to better enforce treatment of communal areas, but you can't without a police report, etc.

I also live in a housing cooperative and I'm glad these laws exist. They protect me from some neighbors that want to set up CCTV everywhere because somebody once saw a kid in the yard that he didn't recognize so must be a burgler (dark skin tone I might add), and because some neighbors don't fold their cardboard boxes properly in the recycling room. And for that BS I and all neighbors should be put under permanent video surveillance in all common areas on the property? No way, I'm glad the law prohibits that.

[benj111]

>I agree with your general point that the EU does not know how to make life easy for small businesses

Is this even an EU specific thing?

I set up a company in the UK, and the only thing I needed was a number to do tax returns. The only other required thing is the tax returns, and that only gets you to the level of the typical American who has to do tax returns anyway.

[robertlagrant]

> Those annoying pop-ups almost everywhere are a disinformation campaign to turn users against that law.

I think it's just businesses not knowing, and Googling a service, and installing that service which introspects their cookies and shows them to users with an obnoxious popup.

[theshrike79]

Some of it are bigger companies being deliberately obtuse and making it as hard as possible to uncheck the tracking cookies.

Then a bunch of mid-size companies who just do what the big guys do because if they do it, it must be fine.

If everyone who just use cookies for session tracking (which is perfectly fine) woulds stop asking, we could better differentiate the bad ones from the good ones.

[robertlagrant]

> If everyone who just use cookies for session tracking (which is perfectly fine) woulds stop asking, we could better differentiate the bad ones from the good ones.

Agreed. My experience was slightly different: we used cookies purely for login, and our legal person still just heard "cookies" and so we needed a consent popup.

[lynx23]

Then the author should probably register a company in an english speaking country. Go figure.

[pembrook]

And this kind of attitude is why Europe’s future prospects don’t look great.

Based on the demographics, most European countries are going to have to start importing young people (immigrants) if they want to keep their social welfare systems up for the next generation. It’s a well known fact that first generation immigrants often have the highest rates of entrepreneurship.

Yet, unlike the US, which was created around the idea of being a nation of immigrants, Europe does a really bad job of integrating people (not unique to Europe, it’s really the default state of humans).

English is the lingua franca of Europe. To make it hard for the people most likely to start a business (immigrants) to do so, is astonishingly short sighted. Where do you think the tax money that pays for the salaries of the 5 million German government workers rubber stamping all these documents comes from?

[q-big]

> Europe does a really bad job of integrating people (not unique to Europe, it’s really the default state of humans).

> English is the lingua franca of Europe.

These two sentences contradict each other: Integrating people implies that these people better learn and speak the native language of the country that they are in instead of English (in the EU of course except for Ireland and Malta, the only two EU countries where English is an (but not the only and first) official language).

[ido]

I live in Germany and have lived in Austria before (I lived in the German speaking countries since 2005). I have 2 native born Berliner children who speak German as their mother tongue. I speak German just fine for my day to day interactions but legalese German for corporate use with the government isn’t the same as everyday German (I also run a company here).

I manage anyway, but im sure this unnecessary friction is one of the factors in reducing entrepreneurship in Germany (my native tongue isn’t English but like everyone these days I learned English very early in life and still speak it better than German).

Ultimately it would be better for Germany to reduce friction for economic activity as much as possible. As others said you can register a company in Estonia without being fluent in Estonian. There is nothing inherently different about German or Germany except that they don’t care as much as Estonia does to encourage (or at least not discourage) entrepreneurship.

In general I wish “old Europe” would have been subjected to the same requirement for reform and modernization as the former communist countries were as a condition when they joined the EU. And generally for some Germans to drop the attitude that they’re better than Eastern Europeans - nobody is suggesting this with malicious intent, it’s meant to make things better for everyone in Germany - including Germans themselves.

[lynx23]

There isn't even a english speaking country in the EU anymore, and you say english is the defacto langauge of Europe? Seriously? If someone comes to a foreign country, they better start learning the language there, or they will have a hard time integrating. I see this on a daily basis. Language barriers are the biggest issues. We have people from foreign countries working in restaurants now, and somehow the customer is now supposed to speak their language if they want to talk about the order? The future is sign language I suppose.

No, it is not as simple as you seem to put it. Egnlish is not german, period. If someone wants to prosper in germany, they better learn german.

[q-big]

> There isn't even a english speaking country in the EU anymore

Ireland and Malta have English as one of the official languages, and for Ireland English is in practice even the more important one of the official languages.

But that's it.

[pembrook]

> There isn't even a english speaking country in the EU anymore, and you say english is the defacto langauge of Europe?

Hrmmm. What language do you think people who work in the EU government use when communicating with each other? Here's a hint, it's not Portuguese, Finnish, Dutch, French or Italian.

It's definitely not German (a few historical reasons for that...).

The term lingua franca means "bridge language." That's what English is in the EU.

> ...The future is sign language I suppose.

Or, Europeans can continue doing what they already do when conducting business or dealing with tourists, which is...speak English when dealing with people from other countries.

[type0]

Yeah, Euro English is a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English but doing bureaucracy in it on the local level isn't easy, mainly because legalese is often untranslatable

[lm28469]

> And this kind of attitude is why Europe’s future prospects don’t look great.

Only if Europe wants to be some culturless "money above all" USA style conglomerate

[Major_Grooves]

indeed. As I was doing the process with two native German speakers, the language was really the minor part of the problem. Really it is the overall process that is absurd.