Honestly, this just reflects the age of the population. Change is more painful when you're old, so stasis becomes more attractive. Usually Germans like the general idea of improvement, but they hate change.
The joke about the Merkel government was that if the French state is founded on the concept of 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité', the German state is founded on 'Stabilität, Stabilität, Stabilität' even in the face of badly needed change.
Fax is a secure channel, apparently, which of course is complete horseshit. It uses the phone network, which is only marginally better than the internet. Many know that email headers can be faked, but not so many know that phone numbers can, too.
Legally I guess this becomes the problem of the party that introduces the intermediate stages. The other party doesn't need to care.