Not to brag, but there are so few things to actually feel some civic pride for in America, and business registration is one of them, so I guess we have that.
I can get an IRS EIN (tax ID), register an LLC, obtain a sales tax license (only required for selling stuff), and open a business checking account in about 2 hours in Colorado. Someone who knows what they’re doing and doesn’t spend time researching banking options could probably get it all done in 30 minutes.
Alternatively, a legal services company will do it all for you for about $500. If you have partners and want multiple shareholders, the price jumps to about $1000, but you can also do that on your own.
Unless you're opening companies on a daily basis to evade taxes or whatever, I fail to see why you would need the process to be that fast. Because with such short delays, nobody will have actually checked anything, so the only winners are fraudsters, in the end.
If you have 25k€ of capital but get flustered because the state wants to make sure that you are not opening a shell company for someone else and that your articles of incorporation are legally valid, then maybe you need to rethink something.
I disagree. 25k euro is simultaneously a large and not a large amount of money. It's big enough to lock out many potential small business founders. But also many ordinary inexperienced people can have that amount of money up front, yet still be deterred by the complexity of a 6 week long incorporation process as described in this article. Especially in the early days of a company when your stress level is already through the roof dealing with the actual problems of your new business.
I am generally suspicious of rhetoric like "you're a little well off, so we can heap arbitrary amounts of bullshit on you and you shouldn't complain".
> It's big enough to lock out many potential small business founders.
They can open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship) instead. You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that tiny.
> But also many ordinary inexperienced people can have that amount of money up front, yet still be deterred by the complexity of a 6 week long incorporation process as described in this article.
Back to my point then. If they're not ready to put up with okay-ish bureaucratic friction in the founding phase, they're not ready to open a company. Because if you think opening the company is hard, wait until payroll or tax season is upon you.
> I am generally suspicious of rhetoric like "you're a little well off, so we can heap arbitrary amounts of bullshit on you and you shouldn't complain".
You're completely mischaracterizing what I said. Don't do that.
>They can open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship) instead.
Sole proprietorship doesn't have liability protection. That's not a small thing.
>You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that tiny.
"[Thing] is too complex, don't bother with it" is not an argument against making [thing] less complex. It's actually just a restatement of the problem!
Other countries make it easy to set up a limited company. UK, US, Singapore, they're all just a token fee and a handful of forms. I see no reason for Germany to make it so difficult as described in the article.
A lot of successful companies were started by broke college grads out of their dorms; they would never have gotten off the ground if they had to scrounge together the equivalent 25k euros before even getting started. Hell, I don't have a spare 25k lying around and I've been working full time for 4 years.
> If they're not ready to put up with okay-ish bureaucratic friction in the founding phase, they're not ready to open a company.
With this mentality, it's actually a miracle a German startup scene exists at all.
The _last thing_ a founder wants is to wade through useless bureaucracy when there's a product to push and Vacs to talk to.
But Germany never really was a founder's country, and much more ruled by big conglomerates it seems or small family business who did non-innovative things (the bakery at the corner - necessary&nice, but not innovative), than startup culture.
I had my first LLC in grade school over a summer. I didn’t make a ton of money, but I did earn enough for my first real computer, which launched my interest in programming.
When my wife started her current business as a consultant, she was living off her savings from teaching high school. If you think every entrepreneur has €25k of capital, you need to reevaluate what your country thinks of entrepreneurship.
It’s unlikely you’ll lose it all, but suppose you write a clever app — maybe a cvs editor.
Suppose you find out your cvs editor infringes on a patent and you’re liable. Suppose some business suffers data loss and sues. These things do happen in Europe too.
Also, it’s just a matter of professionalism. A sole proprietor isn’t very professional and many medium-size businesses won’t do business with sole proprietorships.
The discussions is not about setting up an LLC in the EU, but specifically in Germany. Subsequent to that we are comparing this with other developed countries in the world, not all of which are in the EU, which is fine, and does not undermine the comparison.
As explained in the article, if you don't have 25k€ of capital, then you open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship), not a GmbH (LLC). It's a much simpler process.
Delaware is a popular state for incorporation in the United States due to its favorable corporate laws and established legal precedents. A C-Corporation (C-Corp) is a type of business structure that is a separate legal entity from its owners (shareholders). Shareholders have limited liability, and the corporation itself pays taxes on its profits. This is different from an LLC, where the owners report the profits and losses on their individual tax returns.
You can also create an UG (haftungsbeschränkt) which is basically a GmbH with the 25k€ requirement removed.
The only drawback is that this can make the operation look less trustworthy, depending on whom you are dealing with.
If you are selling Hot Dogs, nobody will bat an eye if it’s a UG, but if you apply for a big software contract, people might be wary.
Presumably the UG is still preferable to being a sole trader when dealing with much larger customers. Is that right? Or does providing services in your own name come across as more trustworthy to those parties?
I'm skeptical that an at most 25k€ recovery would alleviate weariness of a big software contract without additional due diligence.
It seems to me that a sole proprietorship would do more to protect against counterparty risk, i.e. more of the person's assets would be available to satisfy the debt.
My guess is that counterparties prefer a limited liability partner to arguably insulate themselves from employment liabilities.
Most self-employed people in Germany operate as "Kleinunternehmer" and therefore lack the liability protections provided by the LLC equivalent discussed in the article. It's apples to oranges.
That depends how they defined self-employed. It could vary widely based on which vehicle was used, LLC, LTD, sole-proprietor. And LLC and LTD is ambiguous, yet easy to attain outside Germany.
I think the time is not necessarily the issue. The issue is that everything is very manual and “analog” in Germany. You have to find a notary, register the “Gewerbe” at the Gewerbeamt, get a tax ID, and so forth. All are different processes with different institutions.
In theory, you can do the notarization online, but when I attempted to do it, the first notary did not even reply, and the second one told me: “The system is currently down. I would need to come to the office.”
In the US, you can just use Stripe Atlas or similar services, and get everything done for $500 in a nice digital interface within 2 or 3 days. But even if it took 2 weeks, it wouldn’t matter much because one doesn’t have to put time and energy into it whereas in Germany you have to contact people, coordinate, etc…
It is and it isn't. The IHK registration is a sham, since they're a government protected cartel that don't even act in the interests of those they're supposed to guard (like Azubis).
These kind of frictions are typically not an exception. When I read this blog post about the steps to just start a business, I immediately assume that there'll be similar frictions during other steps. And indeed, the comments here talk about the difficulty to own a home when the money was already paid in October, how it can take up to 2 years to close down a company, or how there's a 30% exit tax even if you leave the country only for a few years.
The friction that you seem to like has almost certainly cost Germany a good deal of jobs from people who decides that the hassle just wasn't worth it.
When you have hundreds of millions of people in a country, there's a lot of companies being opened on a daily basis, and the time wasted on bureaucracy quickly adds up to a dent in overall national productivity.
It doesn't need to be that fast, but the process in some (or maybe even many?) EU countries is rather ridiculous, as described here.
Anyone should be able to start a business, reasonably easily and cheaply – I feel it's a matter of basic freedom and liberty: you should be able to do what you bloody well want with your life, including starting a business. Basic protections to prevent the most egregious of abuse is fine, but mostly it's just about registration and paperwork.
Having to pay tens of thousands of euros for limited liability so you don't risk getting completely assraped if your business fails is how you keep the poor plebs in their place. All of this is classic "one set of rules for the poor, another set of rules for the rich" type of stuff.
A seasoned fraudster or tax evader have all the experience, time, and resources to navigate and exploit the system regardless of the measures in place.
On the other hand, an ordinary individual considering starting a new business, perhaps only a few times in their lifetime, may indeed be dissuaded from pursuing this venture.
This issue mirrors the inefficacy of anti-money laundering policies, which, while intended to curb criminal activities, have a negligible impact estimated at merely 0.1%; but the global cost of implementing these policies exceeds their benefits of two orders of magnitude (see DOI:10.1080/25741292.2020.1725366 for details).
What you are actually saying is that speed is only for criminals and anything honest must drag out for a long time. Neither are true.
Starting this process should only require that they know their responsibilities, have identified themselves, and have fulfilled any obligations like payment. With government having our ID’s and login/sig/payment tech, each step should be done in seconds. Then, some fraud prevention spotting obvious issues might add a bit more time. It should still be quick.
Just because something is important doesn't mean it has to be inconvenient. A lot of people conflate opening a business with a major life event and embarking on a career, where a few weeks of admin is some kind of minimum commitment. But the whole idea is that we should allow for small organic "side hustles" and growth.
Here in the US (at least in entrepreneurial circles) it's common advice to wrap an LLC around anything that involves money. Hobby website starting to get some traffic? LLC. Selling earrings at the craft fair? LLC. I own a small building with my brother--you bet there's an LLC there. I started a $0 capital consulting company while a post-doc, just to try.
It's not a daily occurrence, but often enough that I don't want to waste time.
Yes, a GmbH is a corporation and mostly dissimilar to an LLC. In Germany, there's no such thing as an LLC, except for some professions. So if you want limited liability, you're only option is to incorporate.
Mostly, it’s that Delaware’s corporate law is more developed so investors have more certainty of what they are getting; this is also a self-reinforcing condition, since the preference for Delaware corps means more corporate issues get resolved under Delaware law.
That sucks. I can see how it costs thousands of euros per year to do the annual financial statements, but 15 000? Is that common, or were there special circumstances?
nothing special i think this is on the cheap side, does not even include lawyers or any huge fights, just a "normal" shut down. Remember you have to include work time of founders that would be spend earning money otherwise. If germany forces you to do 2 hours filling out forms for bullshit you have to include your hourly wage to get the total costs. Usually everything in germany assumes "work to deal with government bs" is free and does not exist, which is of course absurd.
it was nearly 100h of work for me, took ~2 years and the pure cash cost was nearly 10k. i dont remember what was for accounting, notary etc. but i think its really fair to simplify this as saying it cost 15k.
I did not make up anything. it was nearly 100h (so i did not even use a high hourly rate for estimating) of work for me, took ~2 years and the pure cash cost was nearly 10k. i think its really fair to simplify this as saying it cost 15k. I am really fed up by people downplaying the cost of labour imposed by ruthless beurocrats and i think its toxic to banalize this.
That's not how things work, you can't just make up some hourly rate and then bloviate about it like it's an actual cost.
Yes, time spent is a problem, but then communicate it in form of TIME SPENT, not just inflate the costs into some arbitrary number so you can make it sound worse while whining. It's dishonest.
In Sweden you can sell your company to a specialized company that will dissolve it for you (for example this one: https://www.standardbolag.com/services/liquidation). This can be done in a matter of 1-2 weeks.
In Sweden, you can of course also choose to dissolve it yourself, but nobody does that since it takes years, and it's pretty cheap to let someone else take care of it for you.
It sounds like the same service is not available on the market in Germany?
afaik there is no formalized process to sell for winding down a company in germany as in sweden, though some attorneys offer a service to connect with some clients that want to start a company and try to do a swap, which is legally a grey area. I did that also once but it was a nightmare in a differnt way and took not much less time and energy. I am sure you can be lucky there if the timing is right and the people taking over are not complete idiots but it took still 1.6 years until everything was completely over. Only (maybe) worth it if the people taking over are totally vetted and the company they want to run is similar enough to the old one so the trigger for "wirtschaftlichen Neugründung" does not take action, otherwise they have to basically do the same as founding a company from scratch and it makes no sense financially.
In Sweden you can sell your company either to used as a "shelf company", meaning the buyer will later resell it, or you can sell it with the promise that it will be dissolved/liquidated and not resold.
It seems much more popular to sell it to be dissolved since there are some risks involved with someone else using it in the future.
So I can understand if it is not very popular in Germany either to sell a company to be re-used.
What surprises me is that it seems to be a good sized market in Germany for someone to provide a service where they buy your company and later dissolve it, but the service doesn't exist (?)
The formal process in Germany seems simple enough. Just sign a sales contract at a public notary, the buyer replaces the CEO, and you're done.
Since this doesn't really seem to exist (?), I assume the potential liabilities for the buyer are so great that the service price would be much too high?
If you pay them to dissolve the company for you, they buy the shares from you and replace the board and the CEO. At that point, you're completely free from the company.
They then must take the 7-9 months needed to go through the whole dissolution process. There is a mandatory 6 month wait after announcing the dissolution to give lenders/sellers time to make claims against the company. This wait is 12 months in Germany.
There is also paperwork for the accounting, tax filings, etc.
The service takes care of all this as the new owners. Since they have done this literally thousands of times, they don't need to spend many man-hours on it. Therefore, the fee is fairly low, about 1000 dollars, of which 300 dollars are mandatory government fees.
I shut down my personal UG (small gmbh) and it was very painless. If you can prove that there are is no outstanding assets or debt, for example when you’re the only owner and did your books (Bilanz) correct, you can file for “deletion” (sofortige Löschung) of the corp, and not go through the liquidation process.
It involves setting your balance sheets to 0 (careful here, if it goes under 0 you are bankrupt and have to file for insolvency), proof through your bookkeeping that the company has no assets and no debt, submitting to the court and wait a couple days until the court signed off on it. Then the corp is gone.
i could not find the most important question while skim reading: does it have to be germany. i would rather sit in boiling water than found a company there again. you don't always have to move away completely to have a non germany company though i can also recommend that final step.
Bingo. I live in Berlin. I know loads of folks who found Delaware corporations, use deel.com to work for them, and eventually found a GmbH when they need to.
It might be tough, but even 25 years ago, my worst case (in Norway) to get a US bank account was to find one that'd let me have the paperwork notarized at the US consulate. The next step up in difficulty was flying to the US and open it in person. It still limits your choice, but last time I was involved in it it was easier (we found a bank that had a branch in the country my then cofounder was in)
Tangential question for third-country nationals in Berlin (like me right now): Does the Berlin immigration office readily give EU Blue Cards to people in that arrangement, or do they say it's really a form of self-employment because you own the company you're working for? And do the public health insurance funds treat this as employment or self-employment for purposes of qualifying for public health insurance, for people who don't yet have that?
Of course, the immigration question wouldn't matter for other immigration situations like holding German or EU citizenship, German permanent residence or EU long-term permanent residence, family reunification permits, or anyone who actually gets explicit approval to be self-employed. And the health insurance question wouldn't matter for people switching from employment (with public health insurance) to self-employment.
The freelance visa requires a local economic interest (a reason to live here), usually in the form of German customers. There is nothing mentioned about where the company is registered and it should not matter.
Practically though, the immigration office's bureaucrats are by definition as far removed from entrepreneurship as they can be, and might struggle to reconcile the documents you have with the list of documents they are told to ask for.
Understood, yeah. (And thanks for your site, I've consulted it several times!) The rules I was asking about were the EU Blue Card rules and the rules for getting into public health insurance (GKV) without previously having such coverage within the EU.
My impression is that working for a company one substantially owns or controls, regardless of where it is registered, can lead to them deciding that it's self-employment and disqualifying a third-country national from using that work as the basis for an EU Blue Card or GKV.
Also, the rules for obtaining an EU Blue Card (or a skilled worker permit) require the employer to have a place of business in Germany, and that might be hard to demonstrate when the only tie to Germany is the location of the applicant. No idea if just renting a German office address for the business would suffice. At least Americans, Canadians, and other §41 AufenthV Abs 1 nationalities can bypass this obstacle with the §26 BeschV permit instead, with some extra approval and priority check paperwork. But this doesn't help with the issues in the previous paragraph of potentially being viewed as self-employment for immigration and insurance purposes.
What's the benefit of doing that? You'd still be subject to the local laws if you are in Germany for more than > 6 months a year and the fees that Deel is charging for your salary are not that low either.
With high privacy jurisdictions such as Delaware, New Mexico, Wyoming, etc. they're essentially keeping the german tax authority in the dark about the ownership of those LLCs, which might change now with the new US mandated filing with FinCEN for UBOs.
They're all committing tax fraud and thinking they're in the clear, only getting away with it due to lack of international cooperation. It will bite them in the ass sooner or later, the taxman always gets his cut. The only way to avoid it is to physically move out.
That's what I suspected. The amount of misinformation regarding tax-residency and exit taxes that people just believe because they saw some YouTube videos is scary.
Germany has CFC & management and control rules. Those LLCs are treated as german companies in the eyes of the Finanszamt if their UBO (Ultimate Beneficiary Owner) has a german tax residency and is managing the company from germany.
Sorry to be the one to break it to you but essentially they're all committing tax fraud.
Minimum initial share capital of €12,500 to found a company where liability is limited to the firm seems like a very regressive impediment to business. For comparison in the UK, there's a £12 registration fee, and a £1 (one pound) minimum initial share capital. It must put limited liability out of reach of so many people.
It's extremely regressive. I started an effort to reform things in Italy and... it kinda sorta got some actual results, although not quite as much as I'd hoped
How many days of wages is 12,500 for the average worker? In the US, even for someone making minimum wage, you could pretty quickly cover the costs of forming an LLC, let alone someone making more.
Yes, I lit the fuse on that. I took a look at your site and the first thing I saw was about a guy who lives here in Bend, Oregon, where we moved from Padova. Small world!
Is running under a limited enough to limit liability? I'm no lawyer but thought you'd have to establish all the corporate infra (bank, tools, etc) to avoid piercing the veil in your daily ops.
Yes. The corporate veil isn't a literal one - you own the company in your real name, registered to your real address, but the company is the entity that is at risk from legal action unless you've explicitly offered a personal guarantee.
> It must put limited liability out of reach of so many people.
That's the entire point. The concept that any idiot can start an LLC with no
collateral (which the 25k are) is completely, absolutely, mind bogglingly bonkers to us Germans. Sounds like a scam imo.
why is there an assumption that people starting an LLC in Germany not an idiot?
no wonder you guys fell for Wirecard
good thing the EU/Eurozone/EFTA/EEA lets anyone do business with a business entity registered in any member state and accept SEPA in any regional currency
so some microstate with competitive laws and more egalitarian access can circumvent Germany’s exclusionary hurdles
I'm not saying it's great, it's just that German culture has no place for no collateral LLC's. We don't do this here, our business culture is much closer to medieval trade guilds still, rather than a modern globalized economy.
I really get tired of the old world bullshit, especially regarding share capital. It seems it was more useful as a form of Proof of Stake to support old isolated currencies that doesn't have much relevancy in a monetary union.
But I'm glad Luxembourgh, Estonia and others do things that mirror new world novelties, while remaining easier to bank in the EU with than non-EU entities, and look familiar to EU residents.
Companies are the legal ownership equivalents of shipping containers, and enabled a revolution in humanity despite being so simple, much like shipping containers. There is something up with your laws if that is not what they effectively act as to need collateral like that.
I don't fully understand the comment you've made. Why do you believe it to be bonkers or a scam to allow no-capital limited liability firms?
It effectively puts the entire country into a position where unless a citizen is born relatively wealthy, they have to perform labour for someone else for several years while they save up enough to start their own business. Who does the system benefit? What is it preventing? Why has the sky not fallen in on the UK with a near identical economy, but near-zero cost ltd company startup fees?
There are plenty of other forms of companies than LLC which people can use.
With an LLC, the company is only liable with the capital that it has, and if it has none, then it can scam people with impunity (there can be criminal charges if there's outright fraud, but you won't win any money in a civil case against a company that scammed you, if the company has no money).
Don't know how it works in the UK/Germany, but an LLC isn't a complete shield against liability. If you're scamming people or acting recklessly you could easily find your personal assets targeted by a judge.
> It effectively puts the entire country into a position where unless a citizen is born relatively wealthy, they have to perform labour for someone else for several years while they save up enough to start their own business.
Yup that's pretty much the idea.
If you think that's unfair, oh boy, wait until you hear about our infamous trade schools and apprenticeships.
Though you're right, incorporation doesn't shield from scammers. We as a nation fell for Wirecard after all.
I see, I think it's implied there that if you're not wealthy then forming a business while assuming all the liability of the business is an equally or larger moat to cross for the poor.
It means that as soon as you screw something up or just get unlucky you might not only lose your business, but your personal savings, house etc.
You're correct, this is the opinion I was trying to get across in my original comment about the inequity in the German system relating to limited liability firms.
No it's not. With UG's limited liability is only extended to the collateral put in, meaning that as soon as someone sues you for 2€, suddenly you're liable with your private wealth. A GmbH is a true shield against that, you can be sued for millions and are shielded behind the 25k collateral.
My understanding was so far, that if the initial Stammkapital for an UG is too low, it then is seen under constant thread of insolvency under the law. Meaning that you're effectively always delaying insolvency, which is a crime. So if you then actually go bankrupt, assuming you're both Gesellschafter and Geschäftsführer, you're pretty much guaranteed to be convicted.
Though I have to admit this was 10 years ago when I looked into it. I remember there being a lot of fearmongering around starting an UG back then.
I'm not an expert, especially not on the German law. But here's my understanding:
If a UG with 1 euro in share capital has a large equity, low expenses, and is run prudently, then I don't think the CEO/shareholders are personally liable if the UG is sued for a million euros and must pay that?
Both a GmbH and a UG have a "share capital" (Stammkapital). It is at least 25 000 euros for a GmbH, and 1 euro for a UG. On day 1, this is also the equity (Eigenkapital).
If the company makes profits, that will increase the equity. The equity makes it possible to keep spending money for a while even if the cash flow is negative. A 1 euro UG can in theory have 1 million euros in equity.
In both cases, the CEO is legally obligated to start insolvency proceedings immediately if it looks like the company can't pay its bills or loans any more. This is also required if the equity goes below half the share capital (same as in Sweden, "kontrollbalansräkning").
> if the initial Stammkapital for an UG is too low, it then is seen under constant thread of insolvency under the law
I don't think it's that simple? To begin with, it's the equity and the cash flow that matters, not just the Stammkapital (share capital) by itself. A UG can start out with a very low share capital, but if it has no expenses and a positive cash flow, then insolvency is not a risk, right?
If the cash flow suddenly becomes negative, for instance by losing a big client, or the main product suddenly can't be sold any more, then even a GmbH can be under immediate threat of insolvency. The 25 000 euro in share capital is nothing compared to salaries for a bunch of people, plus an office lease agreement that runs for another couple of years, etc.
So if you're operating a GmbH with employees and an office, then I'd say that it can be "seen under constant threat of insolvency" if it only has the share capital available as equity (or worse, just half of it), and the future income is very uncertain. So both a GmbH and a UG can put the CEO in jail if he plays it fast and loose.
I can definitely see how it is easier for a UG to get into insolvency territory, and above all, people running UGs aren't as familiar with the rules and pitfalls.
I could be wrong on some things? I'm interested to learn more in that case.
This is wrong. The UG offers the same protection as the GmbH. It's probably less trusted.
Funfact: you should always use the full title, Companyname UG (haftungsbeschränkt) on all communications and contracts. Emitting the 'haftungsbeschränkt' or shortening it 'haftungsb.' may make you as a CEO personally liable for damages occured.
I have a hard time believing there are many scams that have succeeded specifically because the scammer was permitted to set up an LLC with nominal share capital (at least in the last few decades). In the business world it is pretty standard to do due diligence and get collateral for any material exposure to an LLC. So the people who would be taken in would mainly be the vulnerable and uneducated who could likely be scammed without an LLC. There are additional protections against scams via various laws relating to bankruptcy, creditor protection and "piercing the corporate veil" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil).
Not to mention that the minimum capital requirement is unlikely to deter any determined scammer. All you're really doing is making life slightly difficult for scammers who can't scrape together €12.5k in capital, while simultaneously also making life hard for all the legitimate contractors and (would-be) entrepreneurs who can't scrape together that amount.
If you read the German version of the Wikipedia article you linked, you'll find that this concept is rarely, and I mean _rarely_ applied by courts. It is also case law, which is exceedingly rare in German law. You're going to have a hard time arguing for it's application in court.
Regardless, most laws around incorporation in Germany are a deterrent to any founder, I agree, but I honestly think we don't want this as a society. German culture is about work, and working for _someone_, not starting your own business.
I agree it could, and should be easier, at the same time you won't change a system that evolved from medieval trade guilds.
> German culture is about work, and working for _someone_, not starting your own business.
I wonder how Germany will survive the 21st century, where a key part is to make/capture a market first by some innovation that comes out of some startup scene (Silicon Valley most prominently) and push out all the other players.
German's in tech spheres keep complaining that they are being "ripped of" by the Anglo-Saxon space, but it seems to me it's actually their own mentality that is holding them back.
And of course everyone knows the story about the mp3 format, apparently invented in Germany and monetized in the US
Since 2008 you can found a "UG" ("Mini GmbH") that doesn't require that much upfront capital. It can be foundet with 1 Euro. The catch is that you need use 25% of your yearly revenue until you reached the 25k of a proper GmbH.
The catch is also that everyone can see that you have less than 25k € in funds, so depending on what your customers are, they might not take you serious.
Exactly, there's the notary cost, the monthly banking fees, the yearly books closing and accounting related to that, chamber of commerce registration (recurring yearly as well). You also need to have a mailbox somewhere to be able to receive all the paper work. You can use your home address but it's generally not recommended and frowned upon by land lords.
In my case, I burned through about 2500 euro in the first year just on stuff like that for a holding company that holds shares in my actual company. It takes about 4-5 months to get most of that behind you. Yearly running cost are about 1000 euro (accounting, recurring fees, etc.).
Reading a lot on Germany business culture, my takeaway is that Germany is not made for lean founders who start small but aim big, i.e. your typical startup.
It seems to be aimed either at well established business magnates who want to open yet another business (and 25k€ is nothing in that case) or small bakery-on-the-corner businesses who will go for GmbH anyways (and hence no reason to cough up 25k€).
There's no path that explicitly caters to the tech founder.
Start with a "Einzelunternehmung". Registering that takes 15 to 30 minutes at your local mayors office and costs 30 Euro. From there on you can make something like 20k Euro turnover per year, if you grow out of that, you can still "invest" in a GmbH or whatever suits your needs best.
On the other hand, if you are sure that you're building the next Facebook, getting the money for a GmbH together on day -1 should be no problem at all. It turns out that most companies don't make it that far, though...
That 22k limit is only for the small business rule, which allows the choice of not collecting VAT on sales (but on the flip side cannot deduct it on purchases).
Up to a yearly revenue of 0.6M one can also use a simplified profit calculation method for taxes.
Still suboptimal to have to iterate between business types as I grow (compared to other jurisdictions).
This "slow grow" mindset is so typical German. No one know who the next Facebook/Meta will be - but I would guess for some VCs (not all though) it helps to show you're not some random sole trader
There are 2M sole proprietorships in Germany and around 0.4M partnership type companies (Personengesellschaft; GbR, etc.) and aside from the aspect of trying to appear like a large corporation while actually being a small start-up, they are perfectly adequate for many businesses.
There is also no limit on how large a sole proprietorship can grow.
While mostly held up as example for why one might not want to keep the company form a sole proprietorship forever, Schlecker scaled from a single shop to over 14000 stores near the end and a couple billion euro revenue per year.
A lot of German law is based around the unstated assumption that business owners are 19th century industrial tycoons and all workers are employees. There are a lot of protections for employees (dependent workers) but practically zero for freelancers, for example. The concept of co-owning a business with your spouse is also alien to German law as in almost every situation it's more beneficial for one of both to either be an employee or primarily work elsewhere.
And don't get me started on being a business owner and wanting to become a mother. A lot of women business owners abandon their companies to get hired as regular employees when they want to have children.
To be honest, I don't think much of notaries and believe that they stifle innovation and harm the German economy, especially SMEs, but also clubs and citizens. For example, the purchase or sale of a property can only be carried out with a notary who reads the purchase contract for both parties. For this service, he charges a fee of around 1.5% of the sale price. The entire profession is strictly protected by law and there is no competition.
It's not technically hereditary. But if the job licenses are a finite resource, and the licensee "owns" the license and is allowed to give/sell it to a person of their choice, and the job is reasonably pleasant/profitable... they're very likely to pass it on to their children, unless those children have other plans.
Pharmacies in Italy work much like notaries, although they obviously provide a much more useful service. My understanding is that in part of the US taxis work the same way, with limited # of "medallions" being treated as an investment.
It sounds like notaries are a different service as well, in the US a notary is a minor(very minor) government official whose primary purpose is to verify that the person signing a document is the person they are claiming to be. For the most part US notaries have little knowledge of the contents of that document.
In California (I think other states, but each state has it's own specific laws) the fees are fixed below a small set amount.
I was a but optimistic on my wording, But in the US they are not government employees(they are not paid any sort of salary) just citizens who are authorized to verify signatures(a governmental duty, which is why I called them minor government officials) and are are allowed to collect a small fixed fee for their effort.
FWIW in Germany in order to apply as a notary you have to be a lawyer and the number of notaries is very limited and they're lifetime positions. As with all public officials, there are severe penalties for professional misconduct and losing your lifetime position and benefits is usually enough of an incentive to keep these people honest and careful.
Technically, there is competition. You are free to choose whichever notary you want. But pricing is legally regulated, so you will pay the same price everywhere.
The amount of notaries in Germany is very limited. . You can’t just study that and open a notary in Germany. They are cash cows that obviously don’t want competition. During Covid Germany was the only country of its neighbors that did not do remote attestations.
From 2000 to 2020 the number of notaries in Germany had almost halved. How is that normal for any country ? Unless they replaced notaries with automation which Germany didn’t .
Also it seems that 30% loss was mostly in regions not experiencing economic growth. While others actually saw growth in the number of notaries as well.
The solution is easy: Create a small company to own the property. That company can be sold much more easily than the property itself. It also avoids the tax on propery purchase.
Companies have other issues like VAT/GST and reporting. I had a friend use a company in New Zealand and it cost him multiple % of property price due to an issue he didn't forsee.
New Zealand doesn't have notiaries or special insurance but you do need to use a lawyer to transfer ownership and I think it costs about NZD1500 each for vendor and buyer.
The Notar does much more than just read the contract; he is liable for the correct administration of the transfer of ownership (done by a three phase process which guarantees that the seller cannot get the money without transferring the property and the buyer cannot get the property without selling the money).
The concept of title insurance doesn't exist in Germany as the Notar eliminates the risk.
From a brief search, title insurance often costs around 0.1% of the purchase price of a property; it seems the Notars are collecting a monopoly rent in Germany.
OK but how is it that other countries get by without them for founding LLCs? Are there countless scams going on in the UK surrounding limited company for example since you don't need a notary there?
There's often lots of post hoc justifications in Germany for "why it is that way" (and has to be that way). But nobody ever seems to stop and think: ok but the rest of the world seems to get by OK without these reams and reams of bullshit?
The problem with Germany is not that it is stuck in the 20th century and completely backwards, but that nobody seems to care that it is. Worse, if anything there seems to be a degree of pride among Germans of the "process". As soon as you criticise some piece of particular bullshit German bureaucracy (as opposed to bureaucracy in general, which generally you're permitted to criticise) then they start circling the wagons (often pointing to other countries where the situation is supposedly the same or worse). So it is never going to change.
I now have a German GmbH and had a UK Ltd in the past for 10 years. Definitely there is more seriousness/trustworthiness to a GmbH.
I am not sure there are "countless" scams in the UK, but yes, in 10 years of commercial operation did come across a few oddities. Example - a customer (UK Ltd) who declared bankruptcy owing us a money and then then next day founded a new Ltd company and tried to act like he didn't owe us the money because it was a new entity.
Obviously there is fraud everywhere. Still, I have a higher level of basic trust when dealing with a GmbH than someone who created their Ltd Co 3 hours ago. It's just a sign they are a more serious/stable business counter party to deal with.
Yeah! Especially rampant is reusing names of closed GmbHs, reopening them, sending out invoices and stuff like that. Or spamming newly created GmbHs with phantasy invoices. Or the scam that's called Abmahnung by lawyers. There's plenty in Germany, so don't be fooled.
> a customer (UK Ltd) who declared bankruptcy owing us a money and then then next day founded a new Ltd company and tried to act like he didn't owe us the money because it was a new entity.
That is... how bankruptcy works? He literally didn't owe you money anymore. Obviously you shouldn't extend his new company credit, but extinguishing old debts is the exact purpose of bankruptcy.
It’s a process in the UK too, abuse of which could lead to the courts imposing sanctions ranging from barring the directors from company directorship all the way to piercing the corporate veil and holding directors liable for the company’s debts.
Corporate insolvency requires an “insolvency practitioner” to be appointed by the directors; this is a regulated profession, and this ensures that the company is wound up according to the regulations and statutes.
You cannot just “declare bankruptcy” in the UK either.
The US concept of bankruptcy is basically unimaginable in most (all?) of Europe.
There's an old movie, The Edukators, where one of the protagonist is effectively broke and working a low wage job but has spent years already and has many years more left to pay off a debt she incurred by accidentally crashing into an expensive car without insurance.
This situation is basically impossible in the US where the term "uncollectible" is used to describe such debts.
I don't know about other countries, but in Germany there is Privatinsolvenz which is a personal bankruptcy that would resolve this exact scenario.
Of course it would first be covered by mandatory insurance you have to have when driving a car (if you're not legally allowed to drive a car, well, you're on your own)
FWIW Privatinsolvenz is not instant although the duration was shortened from the very excessive 7 years down to a more reasonable 3 years. During insolvency you're also prohibited from founding/owning companies or freelancing, though.
Bankruptcy in Germany requires you to attempt to pay off your debts within six years. Any remaining debt gets canceled after those six years pass. This is... not how bankruptcy works in Germany.
For a GmbH and other limited liability companiee there are minimum equity requirements instead.
The duration for private bankruptcy was recently cut to 3 years so it's a bit faster now at least.
For corporations there's an entire process but in simple terms the company is handed over to an externally appointed handler who tries to generate liquidity by selling off all assets and contacting all debtors and creditors. The company might recover through the process (e.g. by finding an investor) but legally the corporation is frozen and substituted by a separate corporation that only exists to resolve its bankruptcy. If the corporation no longer has any assets, it can also be fast-tracked for being dissolved.
How does the involvement of a notary at the time of formation reduce the risk of the company going bankrupt?
Is the notary able to model creditworthiness (i.e. they’re acting as a rating agency), or do they just sniff out “undesirables” by some ad hoc, unregulated process involving their personal judgement, or is it something else entirely?
> Example - a customer (UK Ltd) who declared bankruptcy owing us a money and then then next day founded a new Ltd company and tried to act like he didn't owe us the money because it was a new entity.
Depends. This can be illegal and he is personally liable for the amount. That being said, he might have done things by the book and his previous venture is bankrupted.
There are ways to ensure the correct transfer of ownership without involving a third party. You can see these principles at work on some trading platforms already, be it for Magic cards or something else where parties cannot trust each other because they do not know each other.
Next, you would expect that the notary would educate participants and act as a source of trust, an actor in your best interest, but that is not the case. Notaries can change contracts until the last minute, and unless agreed upon, the common 14-day withdrawal period for contracts does not apply to things like buying property. Furthermore, if you are inexperienced, you can easily fall into traps.
As a concrete example, when buying a part of a shared property, it is commonly believed that the "Hausordnung" (house rules) is the owners' agreement for house rules. However, that is not the case, as there can be more, and in our case, it forbade us to keep dogs. Now, you could argue that we should have made ourselves more familiar with the law, and I would agree that is true. However, it begs the question, why do we need a notary?
> There are ways to ensure the correct transfer of ownership without involving a third party. You can see these principles at work on some trading platforms already, be it for Magic cards or something else where parties cannot trust each other because they do not know each other.
So what else is that "trading platform" then, if not a "third party"?
The way in which this problem is solved is by introducing a third party that is trusted by both, seller and buyer. There's nothing wrong with this principle. What's wrong specifically with regard to notarys as a third party in property sales in Germany is that the amount of work involved in being this third party does not really scale linearly with the value of the thing to be transferred, but the system by which the price of the notaries' work is determined assumes that a property transfer is twice as laborious (and thus must be twice as expensive) if the property is twice as expensive as some other property. Which is BS.
Indeed, my mistake and agree. Here, I wanted to refer to the fact that the transfer of ownership could likely be done even without involving a notary or a human in a properly digitalized system.
In that case you have the entity operating and maintaining the "digitalized system" which is the third party that everyone has to trust. And that entity won't do its work for free either. And it also will somehow "involve humans" which are working there.
Oh, and please don't suggest to "simply put it on a blockchain". I don't have the time to explain for the millionth' time why that doesn't work with physical properties. I consider that to be common knowledge among HN users after about 10 years of having those discussions regularly.
Also, property ownership can get ridiculously complex really fast. If just one person owns something, that's simple. But in reality, quite often multiple persons own something together (sometimes some of these persons aren't even humans, but legal entities). In that case there are a gazillion different ways in which such shared ownership can be implemented, with far-reaching implications with regard to what will happen if people disagree, split up, modify or sell the property further down the road. You cannot simply model this complexity with an SQL database because it involves legal contracts that specify the details in which a properties' ownership is shared exactly. And the notary is actually responsible in such a case to write these contracts, ensure that every participant knows about their role and rights within these contracts and isn't shortchanged.
Side question: why don't i hear horror stories about identity theft from those areas that have those evil bureaucratic notaries authenticating everything?
Actually there's been at least one known case of someone "stealing" an entire building worth about 6 million € in Berlin. Even bureaucracy and notaries didn't prevent it, so there's your potential 100% fraud prevention rate going down the drain...
> The concept of title insurance doesn't exist in Germany
(Title insurance is where you must buy insurance when buying a house to guard against the risk that the house may have unknown liabilities or owners)
It doesn't exist in Sweden either, because the ownership of houses is in a central register. You can't make a claim against a house if it is not registered.
Funnily enough, there's no such register for condos in Sweden. So you can end up with a nasty surprise if it turns out you bought a condo that there were unknown bank loans against. But it doesn't happen often enough that there is title insurance against it.
Insurance companies have a similar product though, 'dolda-fel-försäkring'.
I'm not sure what a condo is, but if it's a 'bostadsrätt' then you check with the 'bostadsrättsförening', they're responsible for keeping a register of 'pantsättningar'.
I wonder: why EU did not try to somewhat harmonize company law? I can understand that things like tax code, penal code would not benefit from unification across disparate societies, but companies seem like a ripe target. This should have begun 20 or so years ago.
France is much more digitalized compared to Germany, you can't really put them in the same basket.
The issue on the French side is more that they put the exact same excruciating procedures they had in paper online and didn't simplify too much in the process.
So a normal GmbH, which would be the equivalent of what I'm talking about, can be incorporated online for 25 EUR in 30 minutes?
I thought that's what the article is about. What's so specific about the form of incorporation they are talking about? A limited liability company is the most basic form of a corporation...
Sole proprietorship / self-employment can be started here for around 20 EUR too, but that's not a company. Or does Germany have some other forms of companies that I don't know?
There are many more in my country too, but they don't offer the liability protection and legal personality that is usually expected of "a company". What other kind of corporation could be used in Germany to do the job of a limited liability company?
What they should actually do is allow anybody to register a company in any EU state and then operate in any other. Then the member states would have to compete, and Estonia would be the European Delaware. This may be theoretically possible now, but practically it's not so easy.
Even the USA does not have harmonized company law. Pretty much anything except what concerns the IRS says is in the hand of the individual states. Why would you expect the EU to do so?
Someone in the US can start a Delaware LLC or C corporation without living in Delaware. Can someone living in Germany set up an LLC or corporation in Denmark or Estonia instead of Germany?
Yes they can. In fact, until about 15 years ago, it was common practise in Germany to found an LLC in the UK and convert it into a GmbH only after it grew big and profitable enough to warrant the effort.
Yes, but they would still be a subject of German taxation, which is ridiculously complex and expensive compared to Delaware LLC or an Estonian company run by a person not living in Germany.
They did try. There's the Societas Europaea, a standardized type of corporation largely governed by EU law. It's primarily used by large multinational companies (Think BASF, SAP, Airbus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea
That was part of a push to introduce standardized EU-wide legal forms for other types of businesses as well, but the process stalled and never really went anywhere after that.
Others have mentioned the Societas Europea, which I think is the correct way to do this--provide an option to use a pan-EU legal form. The other way--mandatorily replacing member states' legal forms with one or more pan-EU forms--would simply be too disruptive. You'd be forcing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of companies to change their legal form. Even if you tried to make the conversion process automatic, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to converting every company that won't end up with some companies automatically adopting constitutions that don't make sense (for example).
Some particular aspects of company law are partially harmonised at EU level, for example insolvency law. But that's mostly about ensuring that cross-border insolvencies don't become hopelessly complicated and bogged down through parallel proceedings.
Fun fact, GmbH is not about protection of getting sued. (Because there's "Durchgriffshaftung") It's useful for companies that trade physical goods and e.g. when a vendor that was already paid got bankrupt it won't affect the finances of the founders. Although it shows to the outside world that 25 k€ have been paid and it's not a 1€ company. But in case of impeding bankruptcy it must either be resolved or declared otherwise things go bad. ("Insolvenzverschleppung" - the punishments are a little draconic) GmbH is really a lot of effort to maintain and expensive. The paperwork for UG "Mini GmbH" is basically the same. If I would try co-founding again, I'd probably not do a UG or GmbH.
> ("Insolvenzverschleppung" - the punishments are a little draconic)
The concept of declaring bankruptcy is well known in most western jurisdiction, as is the criminal practice of delaying bankruptcy. Believe it or not, in most of the developed world you can't just have a company go tits up and expect to go out of there scot-free.
> Durchgriffshaftung
I've never heard of this concept before, but from what I can gather it's a rarely applied legal practice that's defined by case law (case law is is pretty rare to encounter in Germany) and it essentially just sounds like what happens in the case of gross neglience / large scale fraud.
I don't know the implications outside of Germany although looking in the Wikipedia article it sounds it's an especially big deal here. If I recall it correctly from a back then mandatory course I did about it, it can even happen for an unpaid parking bill on an empty account.
I'd assume so but probably most legal matters are settled outside of courts. Also looking at it the other way around, it would be pretty silly if creating a GmbH would create immunity. Indeed I doubt it's applied very often but when trying new territory regarding copyright, it's probably worth a consideration that one may still be personally liable.
That said, my point is just that UG/GmbH is overkill in many cases especially if the company isn't making any serious money. You can invent a name, go to the town hall, fill a form so you can do business with it and it's possible to legally receive payments. Founding a GbR is a quite informal thing
A lot of companies do not want to deal with GbR / freelancers anymore as it quickly gets them on the hook for evading social security taxes (Scheinselbstständigkeit) - in my experience having a limited is helpful for landing projects with big corps
I have founded a company in Germany in 2004 and sold it to Google in 2011. I started an AG in Switzerland in 2019 and organized a Delaware-Flip therafter.
Most of the described steps are also necessary for a Delaware incorporation, and I found the process of incorporating a nothingburger.
1) The choice between a limited liability construct or a pass-through construct exists everywhere. My advice was always: Separate the biz from you personally, always use the non-pass-through option unless you really know what you're doing. Complexity and pain of a GmbH is identical to Delaware corp.
2) picking a new name that isn't in any dictionary is generally good advice, no matter what your jurisdiction is. We originally incorporated as SABRE Security, then years late got into a trademark dispute and had to change names. The fact that the Handelsregister can reject particularly poor names shouldn't be an obstacle.
3) I find getting riled up about the share capital a bit weird. I have never seen anyone struggle with that.
4) we can debate the utility of the notary public system in Germany, but this is hardly an obstacle.
5) Setting up a bank account with a GmbH iG in Germany is easy and quick with any of your local savings banks. These are non-profit banks with the explicit charter to help local businesses. Not sure what the author did wrong.
6/7/8) yes you need to pay in the share capital and prove you've done so, and get the reply from the Handelsregister.
9ff) yes you need tax and VAT IDs. Yes you need someone to do your books and taxes. True in Delaware, true in Germany, true in Switzerland.
All in all, the article reads super-whiny. I mean the author even complains that the notary uses your passport to authenticate you (?!).
I have been through a German GmbH, a Swiss AG, and a Delaware C-Corp with VCs, and I can tell you: The bureaucracy is pretty similar. And you will need help with taxes, accounting, legal compliance etc. And yes, it'd be nicer if all of this was simpler, fewer middlemen and lawyers involved, etc. - but this article paints things that are the absolute basics in any of the big jurisdictions as nefarious obstacles.
Having founded a company in Germany, I would never under any circumstances do it again.
Notaries should not exist, and could be replaced by a simple website.
It's all incredibly tedious and slow, and there are lots of reoccurring work and fees. Closing a company takes 2-3 years too, even if there are no irregularities.
Germany loves endless bureaucratic paperwork which absolutely must be done in person (and good luck getting an appointment in Berlin), despite the many years of bleating about Digitalisierung which has apparently amounted to nothing.
I moved from the UK to Germany in 1996 and back then the banking & payment was just sooo backwards. Some stores were incredibly anachronistic (Lerche springs to mind - since closed down)
Germany and "digital" payments have a history due to old reasons.
We don't appreciate its meaning anymore, but cash is literally the only anonymous payment method you can have in this lifetime, and people in Germany tend NOT to trust any entity/company/government holding your data for no particular purpose.
The downside of this is the split brain problem that you have with distributed systems: a state knows something about you that another state maybe doesn't, which leads to "interesting" things like illegal people having multiple identities in several states, etc. Weird s**.
N'ah mate, the main reason is tax fraud, not trust in data holding entities, otherwise nobody in Germany would use Google/Instagram/TikTok if they cared so much about their data privacy.
Being free to dodge the tax man is incredibly valuable for small business and individuals in Germany as a lot of wealth is built on tax fraud. That's the kind of privacy people mean.
> N'ah mate, the main reason is tax fraud, not trust in data holding entities, otherwise nobody in Germany would use Google/Instagram/TikTok if they cared so much about their data privacy.
The people who are very vocal about (data) privacy in Germany (which are quite some people, though not all) indeed typically try to avoid such services.
> We don't appreciate its meaning anymore, but cash is literally the only anonymous payment method you can have in this lifetime, and people in Germany tend NOT to trust any entity/company/government holding your data for no particular purpose.
Exactly.
This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 35 years ago (many of its crimes still have not been prosecuted). There still exist lots of contemporary witnesses who can tell you what being potentially be surveilled means in the day-to-day life.
> This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 25 years ago
In comparison to the NSDAP and SED, I think calling the 15 years of CDU government under Helmut Kohl (which actually ended a bit over 25 years ago) a dictatorship is a bit too harsh... /s
Japan is ranked 4th/20th vs Germany's 23th/35th for mobile/fixed internet speed, so much better overall (and anecdotal evidence is that internet in Germany's countryside is rock bottom).
So Japan rather seems to me to _want_ to do their own thing (at least when it comes to preference for cash, although I agree that still faxing things is strange), compared to Germany which _cannot_, for various reasons.
> Soon you'll be able to use a credit card in most shops even!
Not sure where you people live, but this myth has to stop, eventually. I can literally count on one hand the n. of shops NOT accepting cards - it's most of the times shops which, I guess, use cash to have flexibility in their accountings :)
And credit cards in Germany are not "credit" cards as well. At least the one I got from Sparkasse does not let you hold a balance and must be paid in full every month.
Not sure about those, but I got mine around 2-3 years ago from gebührenfrei.de, which is from Advanzia Bank. Seems fine so far…with a minor disclaimer that I don’t really use it much. :-)
I don't have enough experience to speak about CC in Germany, but I don't see why a Rewe or ... boh, Aldi, Mcdonalds, etc should prevent that. I am a bit surprised, to be honest.
Debitcards, not girocards. I have no girocard since years, and still can easily pay everywhere. But to be fair, the pandemia really pushed this even the small shops.
Not true. It probably depends on the location, but last time I paid for a public service, I had no problem using my Visa Debit Card. I think it was not even possible to use cash.
Admittedly, this was almost a year ago. I found I could pay with credit cards in Berlin, but once I was in smaller areas I was looked at like I was insane if I tried to pay by anything other than cash. Probably didn’t help that my German was terrible.
In particular, I was staying in Nordhausen for work for a couple weeks. The hotel I stayed at tried to refuse to accept that I paid by card online in advance. Every small restaurant I went to refused to accept either a credit or debit card, and only a couple chain (read:overpriced) restaurants would accept Mastercard. When I tried to buy an Ethernet cable at a general store they refused to accept anything other than cash once they realized I was a foreigner.
Maybe it’s a myth in large population centres, but definitely not overall. I had roughly the same experience throughout most of Thuringia, with even gas stations in certain areas only accepting cash.
> From what I heard the cut the public funding for Digitalization by 90% last year.
This is basically wrong. They moved the budgets to different departments, where it made more sense. And it actually does move on..slowly. It's basically a living example of too many technical debts and the pains of federalism gone wrong.
> Soon you'll be able to use a credit card in most shops even!
Real credit cards are very uncommon in Germany. Debit cards on the other hand are working well everywhere, even in small shops (since the pandemia to be fair).
> Debit cards on the other hand are working well everywhere
Not yet. There still exist plenty of cash-only places. In my neighborhood (P-Berg, Berlin) both nearest restaurant and nearest coffee shop are cash-only.
Estonia, like stated in the article. As a German founder living in Estonia, I can confirm that the difference in complexity when it comes to founding a company, filing taxes and dealing with bureaucracy isn’t even comparable.
do you know how in such cases salaries works? i.e. founder and employees are german and the company is in Estonia. Do they work as contractors? I thought to be a normal salaried employee you had to have the company also registered in germany too.
No, you don’t necessarily. Estonia has an e-Residency program targeted exactly at this scenario: Having a company in Estonia but living abroad. However, Germany being Germany, you will still have to deal with the Finanzamt and all the nice stuff that comes with it. So while you can run an Estonian company from Germany and be employed by it, I doubt you will gain much freedom from it. There’s really no escaping German bureaucracy without leaving the country.
In theory, it should be possible for any EU citizen to work in any EU country.
In practice, it is not possible because you need to register to a local tax office of the worker. Spanish employee -> need to register your company with the Spanish tax office.
Good luck unless you can afford expensive legal services that do this for you. Does not make a sense unless you are planning to hire in quantity (>20 workers).
The alternative is that every remote worker is a subcontractor and takes care of their own taxes.
> The alternative is that every remote worker is a subcontractor and takes care of their own taxes.
In Germany the pension insurance (DRV) will come around after a few years and demand a six digit figure from both your company and the employee, plus interest. You can also end up with criminal charges filed against you.
In the UK it can all be done online. It costs £12 and the form takes about ten minutes to complete. You'll get your registration within 12 hours. The only complicated bit is if you don't want your home address to be public record and you don't have a physical office you'll need to sign up for a mailing address somewhere. Of course Brexit makes the whole thing less appealing than it used to be.
I'm not doubting your experience but mine is different. I'm doing business in the Köln/Düsseldorf area and while the experience could be nicer, it is far from terrible. I have been involved in founding five companies (four GmbH and one GmbH & Co. KG) and closing one down in the last 10 years and I would have no qualms to go for another one. Each founding took about 6-8 weeks from first filing to entry into the registry. Getting a VAT ID can take a few weeks longer -- or in one case months longer -- but you can do business with your normal company tax ID and sort it out at the end of the year. If you are really in a hurry, buy a shell company for a few grands plus corpus and you can be running within a week or two. Notaries are really helpful in that case.
From my point of view there are also not many fees and none of them are recurring. IIRC, you have to pay the notary, the registry and the tax office for services rendered. Once you are registered, there are other fees, e.g. IHK (trade association) membership or insurances, but that is not part of the registration, that is cost of doing business.
Liquidation on the other hand takes 12 month (a transitory period required by law) and a few weeks before and after the liquidation for notary appointments. That's it. All in all it took maybe 18 month from decision point to deletion from the registry and the main part of the extra 6 month was deliberation what needed to be done before the transition started.
Notaries often have a list of available shells and can set you up quickly. That's what we did, so talk to your notary. Another way is to use a specialized service like [1].
The relevant keywords for research are "Vorratsgesellschaft" or "Mantelgesellschaft". The former are empty companies with no business activity, the latter are older companies with business history but inactive now. Mantelgesellschaften are nice because they bring a credit history along making stuff like leasing easier but cause a little bit more effort at time of purchase.
Founded companie(s) to in NL and DE. It's not so much that there is a notary step, it's just that the DE notary is slow, expensive etc. In NL it takes 30 minutes at a notary (or online) and typically EUR 125 or so. Done.
Do they also sell really old ones, so you can start in business and immediately advertise with a slogan like "since 1950"? This is something that has been somewhat common in Britain with businesses such as breweries, as provenance is highly valued by the market, yet not generally examined with much rigour!
I've heard similar Kafkaesque stories from German relatives of mine. And from what I gather, most digitalization efforts by state and federal government essentially resulted in digitizing existing bureaucratic procedures.
I moved to Germany about 10 years ago, and my wife and I bought a house here last year. I think the money went to the seller some time in October, but to this day, we're not just yet the official owner of the property because we're still stuck somewhere in the red tape. We're almost there though though (we hope), it's just that change of ownership of a house is a super complicated multi-step procedure here that must involve a notary! Good stuff. And mind you, I'm not talking about anything special about this purchase, just a young family buying a home from an ordinary person who moved away.
(We're hoping it's only a matter of weeks now, though, wish us luck!)
Founding a company in Germany?! Simply living there and working on employment contract is complicated enough. Do not attempt it without lawyer parents.
There is also a brutal and inflexible exit tax. Should you decide to leave Germany, even temporarily, you will be faced with a tax of ~30% of the current valuation of your worldwide shareholdings (in companies in which you have >1% ownership). I commented on this in more detail in another post a while back:
I answered later in the thread: "Unfortunately, so far that deferral will most likely come with the requirement for a security, typically cash. That is the prevailing view of tax specialists right now, but will depend on each individual's experience with their local tax authorities."
Sadly, you cannot just leave and think it would be automatically deferred. You must apply for the deferral before you leave and the local tax authorities can ask for a security in cash for the entire amount owed. It is absolutely kafkaesque.
As with many German corporate tax matters, if you think you are affected by this, you should really speak with a tax advisor who has strong experience working with people in your particular situation. You cannot just read the rules and figure it out.
It depends where you go. I believe (but could be mistaken) that there are agreements between countries, especially within the EU, that enable them to go after you. I am also not sure what the statute of limitations is regarding tax-related crimes. But it could be a valid strategy, I guess!
From the article you linked in that comment[1], it seems like this exit tax only applied to companies where you own 1% or more? and it's structured as the capital gains tax, but due now, so on the current value minus your cost basis.
The US has an exit tax if you renounce citizenship, and it's assessed on your entire net worth. If the article you linked is accurate, this german tax seems much more reasonable.
EDIT: actually, I reviewed, and I think it's broadly similar --- treat all assets as if sold at market value on the date of exit. Thus, any deferred taxes from unrealized capital gains need to be paid when you exit the taxing jurisdiction. Although, again, if the linked article is correct, it only happens to assets where you own >= 1% of the company when exiting Germany, and all capital assets if you qualify in the US.
I'm comparing 'exit taxes'. But also if you leave Germany, you're no longer subject to German income tax, and you have to both leave the US and renounce citizenship to become no longer subject to US income tax.
I think the wording was unclear as that's what I thought too, that "leaving" meant for good, and maybe there was a way back - hence the temporary part.
A tax on simply exiting the country is a very foreign concept to Americans I would assume.
Only for higher income individuals. We get a Foreign Tax Credit for taxes already paid where we live/work.
Looks like the limit last year was $120k. Only 17% of Americans make more than $100k/year. Only ~5million Americans living abroad, or 1.5% of the population.
I'm sure those numbers are correlated, but I'll bet its under a few hundred thousand of people who are burdened with the tax. Even then, the benefits also are pretty nice.
No, all Americans who make money abroad have to file taxes. Yes, there is the Credit and the Exclusion, which will often reduce your burden to often zero but still requires all the paperwork.
Try owning a stake in a foreign company (CFC) though, that's a nightmare with often unavoidable significant taxes.
As someone who is burdened with several thousands in filing costs every year (not tax, I mean the cost of paying an accountant to deal with the filing, which is required for all US citizens), because I have a non-US business, please fill me in on the benefits.
Also more and more non-US banks won't take US citizens as customers because they don't want to deal with the US's FATCA requirements.
No other developed country has these sorts of requirements for non-resident citizens.
isn't comparing it to an even worse jurisdiction like US a bit unfair? why not compare it to other EU countries or even Asia. I'm not a US citizen but being taxed on my global income would be a pretty strong reason to renounce my citizenship.
"If the Department of Homeland Security determines that the renunciation is motivated by tax avoidance purposes, the individual will be found inadmissible to the United States under Section 212(a)(10)(E) of the Immigration and Nationality Act"
It was also changed in 2021, and subsequent rulings that affect it earlier this year. The Wikipedia article is out of touch with more recent developments.
The issue is with the requirement of a security. Winheller do phrase it carefully as "in their view" a security is not required, but that would have to be agreed with the tax authorities in advance and there are different opinions on how likely this is without a firm legal ruling from the law courts.
(What I find concerning is the attitude of the German tax authorities in their continual attempts to strengthen and increase the scope of this law. They are always trying to broaden it leaving it to individuals and the courts to push back on them.)
That is an understandable but incorrect conclusion. That should be the case, especially with freedom of movement within the EU, but the German tax authorities are essentially violating those agreements (which will inevitably get challenged in the law courts, but that will take some years). As I said elsewhere, please consult an experienced tax advisor for your particular circumstances as you cannot just figure this out for yourself, unfortunately.
This is the new modern version of the Berlin wall; trying to hold hostage the productive tax payers because you can't create or attract new ones. It didn't work for the Soviet Union and it's not going to work for Germany.
I document German bureaucracy for a living,[0] and everything is like that. Every life event - immigrating, getting a job, getting married, having a child, buying a car - is mired in slow, paper-based bureaucracy. It is a constant, significant impediment to life in the country.
Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark.
I cannot overstate how terrible German bureaucracy is, and how defeating it is to deal with it. A lot of people give up and leave the country over it.
I don't think that it is overdone. It's bad everywhere, and it's much worse in Berlin.
If you've experienced anything like a modern bureaucracy, Germany is infuriatingly backwards. The article is painfully accurate down to the minute detail.
I have lived/worked/banked in four countries (UK, US, ES, DE).
Germany is not at the cutting edge, but it is far from the worse. The interactions I have had with bureaucratic systems in Thüringen have all been entirely fine. Friendly people, clear process, done quickly. Obviously that is only an n=1. It is a rural area that is not overloaded as Berlin is.
Which country would you consider "modern"? My experiences:
In the UK the way you prove who you are is literally a physical copy of your water bill.
Spain, some things work well enough, others are insane.
US, massive variability from state to state and government department.
- The requirements are arbitrary, undocumented, and largely depend on how the case worker feels on a given day. Common wisdom is to bring far more documents than asked for, just in case.
- Everything is paper-based. You are expected to act as a transport layer between offices that won't talk to each other. Everything is mailed, because digital communications are distrusted and digitalisation lagging far behind.
- Everything takes far longer than it should, partly due to the above, and due to chronic understaffing of government offices.
This is a problem in all major cities, and many of the smaller ones. In this case, n is a pretty big number backed by the many relocation consultants I work with. You got lucky, and I envy you.
Oh for sure it could be much better in Germany, and I hope that rapidly becomes the case. Definitely digitization needs to come faster.
My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is perfect. All the people chiming in about the US being so easy, yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about healthcare and how your health insurance is tied to your employer. Everyone who is extolling how simple the UK is, that's lovely. What a shame about brexit though.
The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.
To your counterexamples: if you move to the US or the UK for a job, you don't really suffer directly from Brexit or healthcare being tied to your unemployment. Sure, these could make things worse in certain cases (let's say you get laid off while in the US and end up having to get your own healthcare for a while).
The thing with bureaucracy is that it's part of normal life, there's no way around it. You can assume there's a 20% chance you'd get laid off in the US and that it would be bad, but there's a 100% chance you'll have to get a work or residence permit or something else in Germany, and it seems that the default is a painful process (reading the comments here).
> The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.
There are still places such as Switzerland where things are better though.
I’m a full time software developer, the lead programmer actually, but I don’t have health care. I have important unfilled prescriptions because of lack of money. So how exactly does a lack of health care not affect people?
No, it's not. For a while, it was mandatory or else the IRS would fine you (so, it wasn't really mandatory, you could just pay the fine). Now they've dropped the fine. But that's at the federal level; some states still have an individual mandate and will fine you.
You can try to argue that the fine is a mandate, but many people found that it was much cheaper to just pay the fine than to buy insurance coverage. Of course, this means they have no health insurance coverage which obviously has big risks, but for many people, the only insurance plans they had access to were literally unaffordable (i.e., higher than their rent, so it was a choice between having a place to live, or having health insurance with a high deductible and copays).
I've never founded a company in Switzerland but it didn't seem that hard, talking with people who did. As an individual most of the things I've had to do (residence permit, taxes...) are also quite straightforward.
I've founded two. It's much harder than it needs to be, although whether it's worse than Germany or Delaware or whatever I'm not sure. The prevalence of quasi-mandatory middlemen whose only task is dealing with the complexity is a bit of a giveaway that it's not easy.
Individual interactions with the government are also frustratingly bureaucratic. The prevalence of fetch quests is a lowlight. Different departments don't talk to each other, maybe they think email is insecure or something, or maybe because every interaction with the government comes with a 30-90CHF+ fee. So I often find myself manually schlepping rubber-stamped documents from one part of the canton to another and paying for the privilege, something that is much better done by computers. A whole set of processes work like this and must be wide open to fraud.
Sometimes departments even expect you to send memos around to themselves. An example of one recent interaction that typifies the whole experience (loosely translated to English):
Clerk: You're late, you will have to pay a 50 CHF fine.
Me: <checks watch> I'm right on time and have been waiting to be called forward for 15 minutes.
Clerk: You were supposed to come within two weeks of the invitation, which was sent 3.5 weeks ago.
Me: I booked this appointment on the same day I received the invitation, which was also the same day it was sent. And today was the first available appointment slot.
Clerk: It says here on your invitation <gestures to fine print> that if you can't come within two weeks, you have to write us a letter to tell us why not.
Me: Ahhmmm.... to double check I'm not misunderstanding this, you expected me to write you a letter informing you your own calendar is full, a fact you already knew? And now you're fining me for not doing that?
Clerk: Yes. Will that be card or cash?
My wife went through something very similar in the last couple of years where her permit expired during COVID because she couldn't get the bureaucracy to pay any attention. She filled out the forms on time, was told to wait. She phoned them, was told her case was in progress, COVID delays etc and she should wait. Eventually she told me about this, we went to the office in person and was informed there was no record of any such interactions and she wasn't even in the system at all. Clerk acted like this was clearly our fault. I told the clerk to please make a record of the fact we'd been there and tried to resolve the situation in person, "I don't have permission to make notes on her file". OK, maybe that's why there are no records of previous interactions then? "Can't say". After that I decided that from now on every interaction is via registered mail. Make them think we're collecting evidence for a legal dispute. Things were suddenly resolved.
I'd love to say the above were unusual but it's really not. Every interaction with the Swiss government I've had tends to be like this if it isn't already digitized: it will be slow, it will be expensive, and it will contain at least one infuriatingly unreasonable gotcha that makes it even slower and more expensive. If a process is digitized on the other hand then it's going to be much better, Switzerland seems to have pretty competent government IT overall (when it exists).
You're missing the point here. It's bad, and it affects people's lives. It also fuels populist sentiment because people blame immigrants for problems not entirely related to them.
Worse still, if a german says fuck it and wants to run his business in Estonia, the org still has to pay taxes in germany
The only silver lining to all this are Spaniards, Greeks, etc say the system here is better than in their country, but I think you should strive to benchmark up and not down
There are CFC tax rules in Germany (like in some other countries). So though corporate taxes in Estonia are zero*, you will likely be subject to the German corporate tax system if the majority of the beneficial owners are based in Germany.
Within Europe: Austria, Switzerland, UK, NL are better than Germany for bureaucracy. Brexit may be an issue for Europeans, but the system is now more fair for non Europeans who want to go to UK.
Outside Europe: Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore is better than Germany.
> My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is perfect.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
In Finland I can't remember the last time I filled a paper form for anything. And I've gotten new debit and credit cards, opened bank and stock holding accounts for me and my family, renewed _very_ expired passports, applied for multiple loans (200k€+), started a company and worked with medical services (recipes, doctor appointments)
The only things that required physical presence were getting my kid's first debit card and fetching the passports, everything else was fully digital and remote.
Yeah, same in Norway. I think the last time I dealt with paper was in 2012, when I had to sign a document to get a .no-domain (before they changed to digital signing). I just signed it with Photoshop instead, since I didn't bother printing and then scanning it.
Everything is digital/easy here and has been it for a long time. Old people can still get a waiver to get government snailmail instead of secure digital mail though.
> Everyone who is extolling how simple the UK is, that's lovely. What a shame about brexit though.
A part of the argument for Brexit was to enable simplifications of bureaucracy (obviously not for the specific case of someone in the EU migrating there, but for everything else). So that's not necessarily a great argument.
It hasn't been capitalized on to any great extent yet because the current government is weak and spent most of the time distracted by COVID. But the potential for simplification is actually there now, whereas previously it was often blocked by EU law.
The UK's big opportunity was: to be the "best" EU country by having the most reasonable (informal, common-sense based) interpretation of EU rules permissible, and to benefit from intra-EU trade and freedom of movement.
This opportunity was sadly squandered due to populism (and Steve Bannon's Cambridge Analytica financed by Rob Mercer), with the result that now tons of migration from India and other Asian places is arranged to fill the gaps that the European workers that left created.
So let's see how life will be at the front doorstop of the EU of which it isn't a member anymore, say, in 10 year's time, compared to how it was 2016. From what my journalist friends are telling me, for once food theft has skyrocketed, because many cannot pay their grocery bills.
Trading with the EU is no harder outside than inside for the UK apparently. If that were the case then there'd now be less of it but after a brief adjustment period the proportion of UK/EU trade has remained constant. The EU rules are oriented towards the needs of Germany and France, so goods trading was "harmonized" around their processes and services trading (where the UK is strong) was never really addressed at all, by the EU's own admission.
Informal/reasonable interpretations of EU law don't work. To even bring that up as an idea shows the culture gap that drove the UK out. The culture in Britain is incompatible with that. What happens is activists go to the ECJ and get a ruling that's unreasonable but formal, which the UK civil service (which likes clear rules) then goes ahead and implements strictly whilst other countries with different cultures would just ignore the rules. This process was called "gold plating". The result was the UK would end up with the worst possible outcome: a reputation for fighting against bad rules and being generally disagreeable/uncooperative, but then actually enforcing those rules when they pass anyway. The approach used by many other EU countries was to all agree on how wonderful the new rules were and then widely flout them, hence why obscure topics like fishing took on surprising prominence in the Brexit debates, the flouting of those rules was a long term and neuralgic issue that typified the problem.
Ten years from 2016 is only two years from now. There won't be any big changes in two years. The UK economy has closely tracked the rest of Europe and isn't doing any worse post-Brexit than other countries, or even sometimes slightly better (nothing to write home about compared to the USA of course, though how much that's due to US deficit spending is open to question).
> From what my journalist friends are telling me
Journalists?! They are widely distrusted for good reasons! You certainly shouldn't be learning anything about Brexit from them, they will happily say all kinds of nonsense that isn't true to try and defend the EU.
>The requirements are arbitrary, undocumented, and largely depend on how the case worker feels on a given day. Common wisdom is to bring far more documents than asked for, just in case.
Years of derision of Greece and its processes and bureaucracy, vindicated... by having the same problems!
I can confirm that moving out into the bacon belt of Brandenburg drastically improved the quality of my public services interactions (as an immigrant). Getting an anmeldung done didn't require a 3 hour ordeal and the local Ausländerbehörde answers their emails.
My favorite Berlin anecdote is when my wife (then girlfriend) and I first arrived in Germany, she was unemployed for the better part of a year as no-one would give her a chance. She actually got quite depressed about it, and reached out about state sponsored integration courses as the language lessons she was taking were expensive and she wanted to do something more holistic. The authorities told her in no uncertain terms that they didn't care and that there were no places available.
My biggest bugbear with Germany is that the state intrudes extensively in your affairs, most of the time they are being benevolent but that intrusion brings in a tremendous amount a bureaucratic baggage. And that baggage is slow, paper based, and becomes a significant barrier for doing anything. In many countries the kind of paperwork you have to slave over here just doesn't exist in the first place.
FWIW my wife and I got married in Denmark. It was impossible for my wife to provide an up-to-date (less than six months old) translated copy of her Chinese birth certificate. Theoretically she could have traveled back to china (in the middle of the pandemic) and begged her backwaters local police authority to print a new copy but they weren't obliged to issue her one. Denmark was happy with her passport and some declarations from the local authorities in Germany.
Some days I really wonder why I continue to put up with the hassle, probably just sunk cost at this point and stubbornness. Wouldn't recommend Germany for anyone with a low frustration tolerance.
Interesting, so this means you can go to another country just to get married there? There's no requirement that one of you have some kind of tie to the country (working, or resident, etc.)?
Yep the Danes are an entrepreneurial bunch, strict cash for marriage document type deal (but all done very professionally, not some vegas chapel pony show).
> My favorite Berlin anecdote is when my wife (then girlfriend) and I first arrived in Germany, she was unemployed for the better part of a year as no-one would give her a chance. She actually got quite depressed about it, and reached out about state sponsored integration courses as the language lessons she was taking were expensive and she wanted to do something more holistic. The authorities told her in no uncertain terms that they didn't care and that there were no places available.
Honestly, as a native German this anecdote rather sounds like your girlfriend saw the good side of the German bureacracy (and life) (you likely haven't seen the bad side ... ;-) ): the girlfriend asked for something and got a direct honest answer. This is German directness, which I would rather consider a German virtue, but often confuses people from other countries where answers tend to be more sugar-coated.
If that was the good side, I certainly don't want to see the bad side. Maybe they gave her an honest answer, but the better answer would have been to help her learn the language.
Lol no. German directness like most other things is a myth. It only shows itself often enough because people who "show" that directness are just rude and can get away with it. I have now had multiple people in power being extremely indirect about things that would make their position weak.
In rest of the world, the behavior of being "direct" only when there's no negative consequence is just called being a jerk.
We're talking about an interaction with the authorities here. In all developed western nations I am aware of (there's maybe 4-5 countries I've interacted with personally) public authorities will communicate in clear and direct language.
No the point is my wife was struggling, and she asked for help integrating, and the state refused to help her integrate. Even as a hardcore capitalist you should be in favor of getting immigrants into the labor market ASAP.
The irony is that fifteen years ago when she was a new immigrant to Australia, the state sponsored TAFE system was amazing for her, taught her English, and totally turned her life around.
> It was impossible for my wife to provide an up-to-date (less than six months old) translated copy of her Chinese birth certificate
I find this hilarious. It's the same in France, you need an up to date "original" of your birth certificate. But why? It's just saying you (full names) were born in XXX on a specific date. There's nothing about it that could change, really. In the country I'm from, your parents get one original on birth, and you can ask for copies from the town hall. But in France multiple administrations were extremely bothered that they weren't "original" (because they say DUPLICATA on them, and in French you get a shitty A4 with a stamped signature one can print at home, but they insist on an original) and weren't in French.
I actually looked into this, apparently its popular across western Europe (not just Germany) and a relic of historical times when the states didn't have centralized birth and death registries. I believe the limited validity and Apostille requirement is a medieval method to combat fraud.
As a new world Australian, the fact this remains in force is completely insane. In Australia the authorities can trivially query the birth and deaths register to verify the validity of certificates.
In Germanys defense, centralized registries were used by the Nazi regime to facilitate the Holocaust.
Anyway Biometric passports/ids pretty much completely supersede this use-case and can be as equally decentralized.
> Anyway Biometric passports/ids pretty much completely supersede this use-case and can be as equally decentralized.
Those are already in place in France, but some administrations still ask for a paper original (or scan of original) of your birth certificate. However some others have implemented some government-backed scheme where it automatically fetches your birth records from a government source (idk how it works behind the scenes) and it just works.
It was the same with a proof of where you live, it had to a be a bill in your name for electricity or something similar, but now it can just query popular sources such as the main electricity provider and just work.
I'm not the parent commenter, but no you can't bribe people in Taiwan or Japan.
If I told you the only way to deal with the Canadian government is bribes, would you believe me? Then why do you believe it when talking about equally advanced countries?
My apologies, looks like I need to level up my reading comprehension. I think I am still confused with smabie's authorative sounding comment, then. Why would he say that you can just pay a bribe?
Japanese bureaucracy has a bad rap, but it isn't that bad. There's still paperwork (not much has moved online) but the public servant staff are super helpful and guide you through things and are helpful when there is some blocker. Especially in the past 3-5 years there have big improvements with a lot of paperwork and stuff that required your personal seal has been removed, and the MyNumber card makes doing anything online very easy. I've never ever had to fax anything as people joke about (and a friend in Germany actually had to do)
You know, I would try and defend (South) Africa at least, but I really can't. I won't call it impossible though, again at least for ZA.
In my experience, ZA bureaucracy is simpler than e.g. Germany or Greece, but general operational incompetence and corruption makes it just as slow. It's a tradeoff of more easily understanding what you have to do, but you'll have to sit in a queue for 6 hours and hope they don't tell you "the system is offline".
The closest thing to legal bribery is to go through specialist firms that deal with the bureaucracy for you, for a fee. This is also much faster as they know who's who within each department to get things done faster.
I've had friends request old documents only to learn 8 months later that the archival facility burnt down a few years ago so they don't know what documents they do or don't have. Ask a firm to do it, pay a couple thousand Rand, and they'll get it done within 3 weeks.
Maybe your information is not up to date.
10-15 years ago you were probably right.
Since then Germany is trending down and Eastern Europe is trending up - and bureaucracy along with it. Digitization, customer friendliness, you name.
Even some random office in Serbia seems more pleasant than dealing with Germany.
Germany is trending towards becoming a has-been, like the UK (with the difference that in the current geopolitical context it's even proving to be an obstacle).
Oh hey there! I've just moved to Germany from the US (not Berlin but hey, easy enough to apply the general knowledge elsewhere) and your site has been fantastic. Obviously I did not move because I valued bureaucracy, but I'm willing to put up with it partly for a fantastic job, and partly to escape the horror that is modern America. Thank you so much!
I'm European because of US healthcare, insecurity, inequality, bad food culture, urban planning, and danger from natural and man made disasters, quality and cost of education.
Every single one of those things is better in my new European home.
I belong to an ethnic minority in Germany and had real Nazis, not Neo-Nazis, as neighbors growing up. Just because you don't know how racist the average German views are, doesn't mean it isn't so.
- CDU, which is politically the closest to the Republicans, is by far the strongest party now
- AFD, actual Neo-Nazis, are the second strongest party in recent polls
- East Germany is basically a giant No-Go area for PoC, with a couple of exceptions.
I appreciate the actual response! I'd like to point out that I didn't say that Germany doesn't have racists or Nazis - as a matter of fact, I'm well aware of this, and in particular I'm aware of the rising popularity of AfD. I don't like this and I won't defend those groups in any way. But I don't think I'm wrong stating that we have more Nazis, unless you're going to be a stickler about which white supremacists are and are not Nazis.
- The US Republican Party is far right and going farther. The Democratic party is also on the right. There are basically zero federal politicians on the left, the best you can get is basically center.
- We had an attack on our federal capitol building three years ago by white supremacists. Nazis carrying flags with the hakenkreuz marched on the Tennessee state capitol about six weeks ago. The number of groups like this is rising swiftly, even the police are in on it.
- We have done very little to stop this, we even had our previous president praising them. It's an embarrassment to our country, honestly. We were so proud to have beaten the Axis powers in WWII - and now we're going down the same path.
There was literally an attack on the US Capitol building three years ago. There was a Nazi march on the Tennessee state capitol building six weeks ago. I don't need CNN to see it with my own eyes.
For me (and I didn't fully appreciate this until I moved here) there is an incredible amount of mental overhead in the US.
Questions you don't have to ask yourself in Germany:
- What happens if I get very sick? Do I have enough savings for cancer?
- What happens if I lose my job? Do I have enough savings to get by if my job fires me?
- What happens if something happens to ny car? How will I get to work? How will I get my groceries?
- What happens if someone has a gun in this crowd? How will I get out? How can I protect people? Is that sound just a car backfiring or is that a gunshot?
- Am I saving enough for retirement? How will I get healthcare when I'm old? How do stocks in my retirement account work? Is this person trying to help me retire or trying to make money off of me?
Naturally most of these problems can be resolved with enough money.And you can have a comfortable life in the USA with enough money. And if we're being honest there are European counties that struggle with similar but maybe not all at once.
There are many things I miss about the US, and maybe someday I'll return. But there is much less financial/life planning related stress for me here
All fantastic examples. A semi-joking game we used to play at my high school was "Firework or gunshot?". A few more to add:
- If I call the police, will they help? Will they help me? Many people I know are SCARED by the police when they're just minding their business, which I'd say indicates something wrong. We nearly had a civil war in 2020 over police killings.
- Very little walking or biking infrastructure. Very long distances between commercial and residential areas too. Even trying to be environmentally friendly feels pointless sometimes when you have to drive 10 or 20 minutes just to go to a recycling center.
- Workers' rights are a joke in the US. OSHA regulations are only followed after someone gets a bad enough injury. Good luck getting any compensation for that too, the phrase "worker's comp" is a joke all by itself.
- The cost of secondary education is ridiculous. I have loans from college, as do most of my friends, and we've been paying those of and will be paying for years to come.
You're very much correct that some or all of these can be resolved with enough money. But even for someone with the cash and connections to make such a drastic and expensive move, it's a lot. I'm sure as time goes on I will find more examples.
Thank you very much for your (and the GP's) input. Interesting perspectives.
As I said, I was hoping for more personal experiences like "this happened to me so I decided to leave" than just perceptions and perceived fears which can be too easily influenced or biased. I can understand how they add up and create stress but so does flying for a lot of people - while being one of the safest modes of transportation.
For example, going to the US, my main fear was violence, and more specific gun violence and terrorism. Luckily I never encountered either, even if there were quite a few shootings and even 9/11! during my very stay. Today I'd just say these are statistically insignificant events (as horrifying as they are).
Secondly I was terrified of losing my job - with everything it entailed, especially my work visa. And I did get fired, eventually. Luckily the whole thing went swimmingly, with COBRA & severance pay picking up the slack during a short search and my next company continuing my visa sponsorship.
I was also afraid of cops (thanks, Hollywood!) but all encounters I actually had (noise complaints during parties and traffic stops) were quite amusing & polite.
In the end I had an amazing, positive experience living in the USA and it also helped me appreciate and understand Europe better. After all the years living in the EU now I could write a whole lot more about the horrors here (corruption, bureaucracy and the Russian threat easily come to mind) but that's not the topic and I am too old to believe there is a perfect place for everybody. Each choice is personal and it's composed from countless subjective, even subconscious factors - so good luck with yours!
Quite many German people hate the bureacracy similarly. But most of them feel powerless to change anything.
EDIT: But to give more evidence for my claim: violent attacks against government clerks are more and more increasing. I will just post two articles (in German), but it is easy to find many such articles:
I know that many people love to hate on bureacracy, but I don't think people actually hate that.
I know this sound stupid, but here's the reality: for the most part, those regulations aren't in place because people love bureacracy. They are there to enforce laws and implement measures that the people demand. They don't directly demand them, but whenever the government announces anything, people complain. They either complain that somebody is getting something they feel like they don't deserve, or they complain that they aren't getting something.
And because Germans love Bürgerbegehren and suing almost as much as they love complaining, everything has to be checked three times before anybody gets anything.
>I trust the Germans to at least be somewhat efficient.
They're eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems.
Having dealt with Germany I have come to realize that excessive bureaucracy is basically a jobs program and a way for people to cover their ass whenever the shit hits the fan.
Something goes wrong and you're the big boss? Add more bureaucracy as your attempt to "fix" the problem and your justification to why your job is valuable to the company.
Something goes wrong on your watch? It's not your fault if you followed all the bureaucracy conjure by your bosses.
> They're [The Germans are] eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems.
Never ever confuse Germans with the German government (except if you are looking for trouble :-) ). It is well-known that what are "lawyer jokes" in the USA are "politicians jokes" in Germany.
I didn't confuse anything I meant exactly what I said. To whit:
1. German companies are equally as bureaucratic because the people and society in general are culturally so into it.
2. German government is formed by German people voted by other German people, they aren't ruled by some aliens that came from of the sky, therefore are representative for them.
German government just reflects the German society, which is happy to come up with an incredibly bureaucratic non-digital process on any random occasion. I was once told by a lawyer assistant in an email, that I need to call them to make an appointment for another call to discuss a billing issue. Needless to say, the matter could be clarified in a few emails, and those are the people who charge 150-200€ per hour. This is the essence of how the things are often done here by businesses which are supposedly rooting for efficiency and profit margins.
For some reason, _fear_ seems to be an important emotion in Germany that steers the collective.
Fear of the boss to be caught with a error on his (hence he adds more bureaucracy), fear of the general public to look racist (hence low policing in high crime area with many foreigners), fear of the case worker to get sued (hence applying the rules literally, to the detriment of the applicant),.etc
Pretty much. I feel like the whole fear drive German conformism comes from the Prussian times where strict hierarchies were enforced and respected, where your superior is always right so don't question it, and the same top-down leadership culture can be seen today in big traditional German corporations.
> Something goes wrong and you're the big boss? Add more bureaucracy as your attempt to "fix" the problem and your justification to why your job is valuable to the company.
This literally applies to big orgs as well with red tape, etc
I've worked in both, plus the Netherlands. France has one forgiving element: usually some room for the human element. Germans civil servants seem happy to apply rules and procedures, even if they are clearly suboptimal. French civil servants would agree it's ridiculous and are more inclined to help you get unstuck if you can show them that you are.
France also seemed further along digitizing things.
Total duration is probably still a tie: it's all over the map but things can take ages in either country.
The Netherlands is great, except when it isn't. If you ever get stuck there, you have no chance convincing anyone. Their believe they have the best (civil) service doesn't help, but it turns out its all highly optimized for 'normal' Dutch citizens. As soon as your deviations from that norm start to add up, you're going to run into unhandled edge cases, which people won't handle (no protocol, and they are not used to using their own brain). "Computer says no" is Dutch (civil) service in a nutshell.
The digitization in france in making things worse on the edge though, the system are buggy and now you no longer have that human you can talk to fix things.
I remember not being able to create an account because the website password validation regex was buggy, I wrote an email about it and it's probably still not fixed. I've had to read the "compiled" js of the website to understand what was wrong to begin with.
I've had administrative processes slightly deviate from the happy path and getting stuck. When you talk to a human now. it's sorry can't do anything it's all online even when you explain that yes you tried other possible contact channels phone,email,in person, etc (email seems to go to /dev/null or get a canned response that clearly didn't read your message).
"Computer says no" is more and more of a thing now here in france. it's faster when you on the common happy path but if you aren't you better pray.
Also the different services still seem unable to talk to each other even when they are in the same building / same administration but different department. Hopefully they'll improve that in 20 years.
At the very least I'm happy I can still see my pension was registered correctly and downloads the attestations to that effect. All without visiting an office in Paris only open on Thursdays 10:00-10:30am ;)
My family and I are Irish citizens and while the Netherlands has been good to us, it is surprising to me that when we go to the hospital you have to check in with a specifically Dutch ID. In the name of the person with the appointment. That seems OK since I have a Dutch driver's licence, but my 4 year old daughter does not, and they seemed to have no idea what to do with her. Usually we figure it out but there's not even a check in desk so I end up bumbling around asking random staff members.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Also, even though my partner has a Dutch tax ID, we still can't file together ourselves, on account of her not having a Dutch ID, and therefore not being able to setup DigiD 'correctly'. We can have a tax consultant do it for us however!
Highly optimized for the happy path, which of course does cover 99% of cases, but you better not be in the 1% :) That's what I liked about France: nobody expects you to be normal, so everybody is used to working around systems. For the Dutch (and Germans), systems are sacred, and if they don't work, it must be you!
Wow. I’ve never had to show ID at Dutch hospitals or clinics. My GP does the referral (!!! great GP!!!) or I turn up at A&E and the (medical) intake has begun. I speak Dutch though, maybe that makes a difference?
In many (?) hospitals, you need to take your ticket somehow when you enter. You can sometimes do this with the letter or email you got, but you can also scan a (Dutch) ID. See 'aanmeldzuil': https://www.zuyderland.nl/ziekenhuis/afspraken/aanmelden/
tergooi MC in Hilversum has no one to talk to when you walk in, really. You get a ticket with your Dutch id, wait where it tells you, and someone calls your name. It's really efficient if you have Dutch id!
At least when I was there last year, if you head left from the entrance there's a couple booths there. Usually at least one is staffed.
Also if I remember at Tergooi MC you needed to register in their system anyways before an appointment. In the past they issued a little plastic card at the very same booth.
Thanks! I called them last week and they told me I couldn't do anything without a specifically Dutch ID. ISTR seeing booths with no staff in the past, I will look again next time.
It could be they were referring to DigiD for logging into their online portal. I recall needing to use it to schedule an appointment with a specialist.
Inside the hospital itself you should be fine with an EU ID card or a passport, I don't think they specifically need a Dutch ID.
I know Germany has this reputation and Germany can be very efficient at times. But the vast majority of the time Germany is anything but efficient.
The Administration is particularly bad. Most of the time, they're understaffed and digital infrastructure is completely lacking most of the places. Then, in many cases, there is also a ping-pong in terms of responsibilities. Sometimes your stuff is bouncing between different levels of administration (thank you federalism) and sometimes its between different departments. Its not unheard of that you have to provide the same data in different forms for the different departments working for the same agency.
The amount of time I have spend waiting in line to do something as simple as renewing my Perso (national ID) or requesting a passport. When I moved two years ago, I spent 4 hours waiting in line to sign a form stating that I moved here. Waiting for the passport was a similar waiting game (and that is as a German-born citizen, I can't begin to imagine how bad it is when you're also concerned with residency and visa stuff).
German companies love to complain about the bureaucracy of the government, but are effectively replicating that same bureaucracy without any need.
So no, most interactions aren't efficient unfortunately
I lived in France, in China and now in Germany.
I would say that somehow, France and Germany are quite similar, it's just that one suck more than another on specific areas and vice-versa.
The net salary is somehow higher in Germany but the amount of subsidies you can get from the state is lower also so it's pretty much the same.
I prefer the decentralized aspect of Germany (unlike France where everything is just centralized in Paris and the rest is just Silent Hill) and also the fact that you can just live without a car.
From France I prefer the more liberal views on "What the state consider to be a family" which is light years ahead of Germany. This said, if you are a married couple with children, you'll get more money from the state in Germany I believe. I believe that Germany is more suitable for mid-40's traditional family, younger/wilder that that, it can be quite boring.
But all of this is just child play compared to how easy things are in China in terms of settle down (based on the experience of someone who has a job with a local company).
I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways".
China has 0.07%, France 10.3%, and Germany 18% immigrants. It's obvious how this explains the difference and why no lessons can be learned from Chinese bureaucracy about how to deal with immigrants.
Exactly what I was referring to in my previous post:
_I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways"._
Did you live in China as an immigrant, did you settle down there for several years, did you have to go through their immigration process ?
It's not pretentious to trust officially published statistics more than anecdotal opinions from random strangers on the internet, and since we're talking about a difference of several orders of magnitude no further arguments why the comparison makes no sense are needed in this case.
What is pretentious however is to judge without having experimenting it.
"no lessons can be learned from Chinese bureaucracy about how to deal with immigrants." is quite a bold statement...
But you go ahead, state that the way other countries are doing things are irrelevant because of almighty statistics etc. (in absolute numbers, 0.07% of immigrants in China represents more people than the population of either France or Germany). You are not the first one stating this and it just feeds my narrative of people located in EU countries that are convinced that they have nothing to learn from anything that comes over the Atlantic, the Ural or the Mediterranean Sea, so nothing will ever improve nor be challenged.
The absolute numbers are irrelevant. It's almost bizarre to me that you don't see that. But even though I haven't experienced it myself, I do have plenty of anecdotal evidence against your statement, e.g. I watched serpentza's Youtube channel for a long time and heard many other first-hand accounts of people working in China. A colleague of mine is also working in China. Some have no troubles, others have to report to a police station every week for no reason. It's overall not good for immigrants in China, especially for black people. In any case, contrary to what you insinuated the duties for foreigners and how easy it is to live as an immigrant differ vastly from city to city.
Now even if I was completely wrong about this assessment (which I'm sure you think I am), it wouldn't make sense to presume that anyone would just take your word for it and allow themselves to be called pretentious when they disagree with you. That rude behavior is not increasing your credibility.
Bro... serpentza and C-milk did very qualitative videos around 2015 and 2016 if my memory is correct but the content produced over the past years has turned completely sensational and they accentuate on it purposefully (probably due to Youtube's algo. Some of their content remain super good though and the soundtrack of serpentza's videos is very good ). Their content has to be taken with a (big) grain of salt.
I sincerely hope that you'll get the opportunity to experiment with the immigration process in China which is straightforward and hope that people may overcome the initial reluctance to draw some of the lessons from a country that is far away and has a questionable political system.
I am not saying that it is perfect, I am just stating that we have things to learn from it and that I believe it is sad to just overturn anything that comes from countries that are different.
I believe we can end this thread here as it seems that we will definitely not agree, but that's OK. Have a good day and sorry if my behavior appeared as rude to you.
I completely agree. I have been living here for 8 years, and recently applied for a permanent settlement permit.
My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back).
Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for months. There is no way to contact the foreign office (no email, no telephone, no fax). You just send your application and pray.
I strongly advise anyone to stay away from Germany if you have better options. This country is a bureaucratic nightmare in general.
Mine too! My residence permit expired in February, and my appointment is in July. I expect to have a valid residence title again by end of August.
Mind you, I applied in December. I will not be able to travel out of the country for most of the summer as I wouldn't be allowed to reenter.
They refused multiple times to issue the temporary permit that I'm legally entitled to. I'm having a lawyer ask again, this time with the threat of a lawsuit.
It's such a common problem that I had to write a detailed article about it. People miss weddings and funerals because the immigration office is months late. The number of lawsuits due to inaction is growing exponentially since 2019.
I'll one up you and say that it's so broken, there are lots of people that basically live on ranges of exceptions.
In my case, I was told I was not eligible for the visa I needed but when I spoke to a migration consultant who knew the process, they managed to get it done. I was pretty shocked as this wink, wink, nod, nod style system is not something I expected from this country.
Yes, bureaucrats can act as gatekeepers for things that you are legally entitled to, and create various bureaucratic hurdles. It's usually mere thoroughness, sometimes incompetence, and if you cross them, vindictiveness.
I was told more than once by very knowledgeable people that if you anger a case worker, they can and will make your life hard by nitpicking every little detail and asking for as many documents as they can.
This happens for example if you get angry at their incompetence, or if you sue them for inaction (although in Berlin they see it as normal business by now).
This is so true . There is a word for it in German… behördenwillkür. Mean they can do with you as they please. Advocate insurance is a must here. I hate the bureaucracy here. Lawyers are the only help
Germany's head of state was involved in the biggest financial scandal of its existence and forgave a corrupt bank that stole millions of taxes just a few years before going into office.
corruption is spreading like a plague with no consequence in sight for anyone involved.
If you believe corruption is just spreading now, you missed every single politician since the founding of Germany. Or every other country on the whole planet therefore.
This sounds like all of you are living in Berlin, which is known as "failed state" to the rest of Germany. ;-)
It varies form city to city, I live in one that I'd say is an exception on the positive side: Most clerks in the various offices are actually helpful and even giving you hints. I had to renew my passport in January and got an appointment the next day. I got the appointment online(!) in Germany(!!). Passport could be collected 4 weeks later. Meanwhile an ex-colleague who lives in Berlin had to wrestle with his nearest office to even get an appointment for a passport renewal, then gave up and made an appointment with the office in the neighboring district, where it was still a 4 weeks wait. He told me there are districts where it takes up to 6 months.
I guess if you want pain and suffering, move to Berlin. :o)
Unfortunately, this is not just a problem limited to Berlin :-( [1][2]
It's been an absolute mess trying to secure my wife's settlement permit ("Niederlassungserlaubnis"). She has a german Master's degree, works in a government-funded research facility, and has been in the system since December 2022. We've now been ghosted for 14 months, only to be told to make an appointment to provide additional documents (which were not on the 'required documents' list they initially handed to us). After checking the appointment booking website to no avail, I came up with a python script that sends a notification to our phones when a new appointment pops up. It took 40 days of scraping until a new free appointment was available, only to be allowed to provide paper documents in person.
Adding to that, every six months, her employer threatens to fire her if she can't prove her legal status in Germany. So she's constantly jumping through hoops to get this temporary paper permit called "Fiktionsbescheinigung" just to keep her job. It's a hassle, costs €13 each time, and involves cycling through multiple unhelpful bureaucrats at the Ausländerbehörde's hotline (they do not answer emails) until finding one that very reluctantly produces this document.
I guess that depends on the city and the procedure, but I had to replace my DNI last summer and it took me less than 30 minutes, and they gave me the new one on the spot.
In comparison I also had to renew my Japanese foreign card and later my ID card, and both procedures were a royal PITA, and in both cases I had to wait a month to get the new card.
Yeah had a close person getting passport after marriage, took years, they made a mistake, another 1.5 years. Took over 5 years in the end.
Lawyers making mistakes, civil cervants making mistakes, making mistakes themselves. Big mess. They are actually breaking EU law while doing these things.
That actually was very interesting for me, living in Spain, how extremely common mistakes were in data entry, generally.
If anyone hands you a form to check your details, you can almost guarantee to find some issue. I've never noticed this living in any other country yet.
This isn't true, this year I have been on a train from Marseille to Berlin and German police checked everyone on the train for passports at the border specifically to check residence validity - and removed one passenger with a residence permit as he attempted to reenter Germany (he was informed he was not initially permitted to leave)
If you're going to risk your future permanent residency, it is very important to know exactly what that 'base rate' is. As someone who travels a fair bit within Schengen, I can tell you that the rate is quite high, much higher than it was a few years ago. And if you happen to look "un-European", the rate is quite a bit higher.
That's true, and if you're doing intra-Schengen travel to attend a relative's funeral, I'd consider risking it...
But otherwise: keep in mind that the freedom of movement is reserved to EU citizens (and their families): if you had to get a residence permit (and thus you're a non-EU national), you don't have the same rights.
Even without temporary (Covid, terrorism, etc.) internal checks, you can be stopped by police (national laws will differ) and be asked to show proof of id, and proof of your right to stay.
The fact that you have a pending residence application in progress will usually give the right to stay in the country that you applied in, but that proof might be as flimsy as as a stamped slip of paper (not even a A4 paper with a letterhead) and/or an email in the local language. Don't expect German police to be able to read and accept your Italian piece of paper, or viceversa Italian police to read and accept your piece of paper in German.
In fact, the same applies for non-EU family of EU citizens: the residence permits will be denied only in extreme cases (e.g. terrorism)... if you're just a non-EU citizen, there are even more situations in which that would apply. Imagine that the country that you applied in might refuse your residence permit: you'd then have to leave the country and Schengen (or file some kind of appeal), and that would make it even clearer that you wouldn't have right to stay in another Schengen country.
So, you might not have right to stay (in another Schengen country), and even if you might have it, proving your right might not be easy.
About the
> Please add a link
The original request could've made sense (you could have for example linked to directive 2004/38/EC , but that doesn't apply to people who aren't EU citizens or family of EU citizens)... but note that in this case we're trying to prove a negative (the laws will usually describe which rights you have, but not in which case you don't have such a right... you might find a guidance or case law document, but those are scarcer)
Again: the whole situation is really unfortunate, because the laws are also written with the expectation that you won't have to wait long after applying for the necessary documents. And even when the laws are clear about the timelines, the bureaucracy will try to weasel themselves out of it, for example Article 10 of the aforementioned directive states:
> The right of residence of family members of a Union citizen who are not nationals of a Member
State shall be evidenced by the issuing of a document called "Residence card of a family member of a Union citizen" no later than six months from the date on which they submit the application. A certificate of application for the residence card shall be issued immediately
Of course, when we had to deal with it, the bureaucracy just asserted that until you show up for the appointment (which you had to wait more than 3 months for, since you originally applied), you haven't actually "submitted your application", yet.
As an EU citizen, realizing first-hand how slow, uncertain, and oppressive our immigration system is, really left a bad taste in my mouth... If you're not a citizen of the EU or an “Annex II” country, I wish you good luck when applying for a Schengen visa, but in case that you might get rejected: don't sweat it, and just consider other destinations, if you're planning a vacation... there are a bunch more places with friendlier visa policies (e.g. Turkiye, Cape Verde, Morocco, UAE, etc.)
Uhm, no - when did you try travelling last? I just crossed the border to Germany from Poland(both ways) and there is nothing there. And before that I drove over in January and there was a huge queue because of "checkpoints to combat illegal immigration" and that checkpoint was just a bunch of border guards standing there looking at cars passing by, they weren't checking passports or much of anything really, it's all just theatre.
About five days ago, Szczecin → Berlin, stopped, had my documents meticulously examined and asked some typical questions I haven't been asked for a decade ("What's your proof of residence", etc).
I look like a typical WASP programmer in his forties, so no selection bias or something.
They pull out some cars, last winter I got pulled out at the border when I entered Germany from Austria. They wanted to see our passports and asked where we were going.
They wanted to see a valid national id of any shengen country, which are easier to get than passports (except in sweden, because it's the police releasing both, so might as well just get a passport).
From a USA perspective, I find that usually when a bureaucratic process is hopelessly broken, it is because a small portion of the population actively hates the people that would benefit from the process and want to harm them. However they cannot legally or popularly discriminate against them so instead they destroy the processes that benefit the hated group. Do you get that impression where you are too?
Given the amount of immigrants in Europe in general and in Germany in particular, I don't think they are trying to deter people. Or if they are trying it's not working.
The incompetence is not confined to immigration, it's pretty much everywhere. Same goes for France actually.
The impression I got from the last time I was in Germany (some ~7 years ago), there's a going concern among at least some people that a certain ethnicity of immigrants is "taking over". This might be a pearl-clutching minority, or I may have completely misread the situation.
German reporting in. Disclaimer: I am biased as I think immigration is great and I wish the process was easier and faster for those seeking to live in Germany. I think your observation is sadly very correct and this minority is very well measurable and concerningly large and growing in a lot of places. Just look at how many people vote for the AfD. Those are the ones having that concern. Luckily some places(e.g. Hamburg, Berlin) are on average more open to foreigners than others (e.g. Sachsen).
There seems to be a growing frustration about asylum seekers who moved to Germany and did not adopt German values, a theme you will find in every country.
It's scary because the party that complains the most about it is gaining traction, and it convinces centrist parties to change their stance on immigration. It's not a pearl-clutching minority anymore, but a politically advantageous position.
As an immigrant, I feel like we're about to live a variation of the Niemöller poem. "First they came for the asylum seekers..."
Well, when you come to a country you should make an effort to adopt the country's values and customs. If you stay for longer you should also make an effort to learn the language.
If you are not doing any of that is that really that surprising that people are getting fed up with it?
Agreed, but even here in the states that has been considered a “racist” position for decades, as has securing the borders. Which after doing a lot of international travel confuses me. I wouldn’t illegally move to Japan, expect them to not deport me, allow me to use social services, and also not mind if I brought my own culture with me without attempting to assimilate on some level.
> There seems to be a growing frustration about asylum seekers who moved to Germany and did not adopt German values, a theme you will find in every country.
I'd like to see white, christians or atheists, germans move to some of the countries those asylum seekers are coming from and see how they'd be treated.
Then we can discuss if it's the same in every country.
i wonder how much of the "incompetence" is really just under-staffing, and how much is the public servants being paid to essentially do little/no work.
This is not a USA perspective. This is a conspiracy theory perspective from spending too much time in liberal/progressive echo-chambers that repeat fearful, hateful myths about their political opponents.
I’m glad you can believe this is true, genuinely. I have hope that maybe this means things will change.
But as a white guy from middle American (in that I lived there for 40 years) who has voted Republican and Democrat and has enough conservative ideas that people are often confused about my political leanings, I can tell you there is some truth to this.
I’ve been in the room more than several hundred times when people who were working in the American bureaucracy openly "decried the horrors of the Mexican invasion ". I will admit the majority of that was my ex’s father but it wasn’t only him. I’m certain he did not make things easier on his Mexican applicants (dmv in his case).
I’ve also heard racial slurs used hundreds of thousands of times, very few people engaging in this voted democrat.
I’m sure there are endless stupid conspiracy theories in progressive echo chambers, I hear them from time to time they are just as silly as republican ones and I would love nothing more the above comment to be correct.
In the end, their experience definitely does not match up with mine and we should all be sad.
As the other user said, this is just the conspiracy politcs obsessed partisan weirdos would like for you to believe. After all, if their side is so benevolent and immigrant loving, why haven't they pushed any genuine immigration system reforms instead of just creating a captive subclass in the form of illegal immigrants?
For instance, if Republicans are really so hateful of certain minorities, why do they not properly go after things like H1B mills (which benefits minorities more than the rich white people that they supposedly want to limit immigration to)? or take effective action to seal off the borders and make immigration policy stricter? As an immigrant myself, I'd take even that over the current hellish system where you spend a decent chunk of your life in limbo, unable to fully settle down because of the uncertainty, since at least then there would be the finality of immediately knowing the doors are closed. The only way the current system is bearable is if you approach it with total apathy, where you avoid getting too attached and just convince yourself that you can also make it in any other country.
Rather than negotiate measures to fix the immigration system (in either direction), both sides would prefer to keep expanding the class of people who are one technicality away from being kicked out, for Republicans it gives them the ability to promise stronger borders every election year, and for Democrats it gives the ability to promise aid to specifically illegal immigrants and of course once elected they can just say that the last guy left a mess and they had their hands full fixing just that or any version of "the other side isn't cooperating/compromising".
A particularly glaring example of this being their inability to agree on a stronger path to permanent residency for PhD holders. Considering that PhDs are generally funded by grants, not offering very easy immigration for PhD holders amounts to training foreigners at your own expense and sending them back to compete with you. PhD holders typically fit the "we only want the best of the best" position of the Republicans (even if we accept the conspiracy that they actually hate all minorities, it'd be a convenient way to 'wash' that image, without having to accept all that many minorities), and for Democrats it would be a very easy "look, we're slowly working to fix immigration" action.
I don’t like to both sides many things but immigration is definitely one case. The system is broken on purpose because US agriculture, construction, and many other labor intensive trades can’t operate profitably without a migrant labor underclass. Nobody wants to fix this. Not Democrats, not Republicans.
Add to that the fact that the Republicans now have a second reason not to fix immigration: they can’t run on it if it’s not broken.
If Trump gets in again he will do a lot of anti immigration theater for his base but nothing will really change. Democrats won’t fix it either. Someone has to pick berries and trim hedges.
EB-2 is technically a path, but from all I've heard it's not that much easier than the regular pipeline, since it involves having 10 years of post-degree experience, thus still leaving you at the mercy of the H1B process in the meantime. That process is also still dependent on the employer's willingness to sponsor, and I've seen several cases of employers refusing to go beyond an H1B sponsorship (of course, they only outright say that right near the end of the H1B's maximum term). 10 years is also still on the order of the time it takes to get permanent residency through the normal lottery.
This perspective remains kinda crazy. Why do US people keep trying to route control of major parts of their life through a system where they believe people who "actively hates the people who would benefit from the process" have significant influence?
People come up with this from time to time but the logical conclusion is small governments. It has been a few centuries now and there hasn't been any progress in improving the quality of the politicians; it isn't going to change. Every single government, literally, has people in it who would be morally comfortable in a Nazi-style dictatorship. Any plan that involves empowering these people is stupid.
Being a white, middle-aged, middle-class male in America I can say I have no productive things to say about how my local, state, or federal government has benefitted myself or my family beyond the things everyone else also benefits from. I don’t get assistance for anything, I don’t get breaks on anything, no free services, etc.
If your first reaction to this is “well you don’t need anything!” you must be one of the people that was astonished at how the 2016 election went.
No I didn’t vote for the guy and I hope he loses this time.
Furthermore, I pay for services I don't avail myself of (my kids go to parochial schools).
And since I don't live in the city, but a rich suburb, it means that Im subsidizing my neighbor's BMW.
I dont even mind school taxes, actually. I just believe that the monies should follow the student and not the school district.
> Why do US people keep trying to route control of major parts of their life through a system where ..
Because sometimes you don't have a say, or you don't expect to use it. No politician ever campaigned on making the lines at the DMV move faster. But we (mostly) all agree you should be required to get a license before you drive. Most Americans drive, and few have chose to route this "major part of their life" away from the DMV.
Immigration process (as this thread illustrates) sucks. It's also not a process used by voters.
The process to apply for welfare in most parts of the US sucks, but the actual welfare is valuable. People think by making it harder, it will instead result in people who are less reliant upon it. Welfare recipients are a huge political target constantly. They're the individuals who are "actively hated" in this example, and they're entirely dependent on the system in that moment, because thats how misfortune works.
Many cities making construction permits hard to get, because local residents don't want their neighborhood changing, so they petition local politicians to make the process slower/harder/more-expensive. In this example they "hate" the new construction.
If you're not a high schooler and you're applying to a state-funded university, the process to prove you're a local resident can be surprisingly complicated. This is because it's designed for high school students and all the edge cases are optimized to avoid accidentally providing tax-subsidized "in-state" tuition to an out-of-state resident. For example, I wanted to take a for-fun class at a local university and because I didn't have a local high school to vouch for my residency, I needed to provide (among other things) 50+ pages of tax documents. It took 2 semesters (1y) to prove I lived in the state, and the minimum amount of time you need to live in-state is 1 year.
People who live their life in the "happy-path" case often don't deal with the government, and don't understand the struggle of these edge cases. Plenty of activities require the government. No way around it. Sometimes, people who think "small government" is the solution end up making those processes terrible by making it understaffed or convoluted to "avoid waste".
If foreigners are in of the hated groups, my personally lived experience serves a counter point.
During my naturalization I was caught by surprise by how quickly my application had been handled. The agent giving me the exam winked and said: "it's election season".
Of course high education and value to the labour market make you a good immigrant, and the lack thereof a "bad" one with less value. Is this something that surprises you?
You're conflating things. GC is different (albeit necessary) from naturalization. I clearly said my citizenship took 6 months. My GC took 6 or 8 years and I got it through my wife.
For those 6 to 8 years I had a student visa then an H1B. Despite having a PhD in the top US program in my field from a top five school.
My wife got her GC through the lottery before she finished university (ie w/ a HS diploma) with 0 years living in the US
(as a fellow American) They almost certainly meant this as "politicians, or their voters, have some bias/hate against something, so they destroy the bureaucracy that benefits those people".
Eg. Republicans hate taxes, so they defund the IRS (tax collectors), to make it harder for the government to audit tax evasion.
Sure. But why accept these people in the first place? I think if there was a consensus, then they would not be accepted. The US is not shy to refuse them entry or to concentrate camp them somewhere. The reality is that there is two factions; one is for and one is against. So you are in for a wild ride.
AFAIK Prague (and Bohemia) had a sizeable german speaking minority until the end of WW2 when they got expelled, so Prague not feeling Austrian today isn't surprising.
Not saying Germany is slow, but that is one area where US is far behind. 21 Months - This is the current processing time for a green card after you have sent in all the paperwork to the USCIS for processing. During that time, you get no updates and of-course if you leave the country without AP, your application is considered to be abandoned.
It's the same in Australia; when you apply for permanent residency your application goes into a black hole. I wanted to learn more about my status and all I got back from the immigration people was 'the agent processing your application will contact you. We do not give out contact details for your agent. You will have to wait'. It took about 8 months.
Once your 'regular' visa expires you go onto a bridging visa which same, you can't really leave the country.
It's expensive as hell too: I think in the end I had a total cost of $7,000, just in application fees. Sounds like immigration is horrible everywhere.
Providing updates to everyone waiting simply wastes time and resources; again, you know roughly how long it's going to take as the estimated times are provided. Hassling the agent on your case is unnecessary.
Regarding leaving and returning Australia - Bridging Visa class Bs are made available if you have good reasons to be leaving and coming back.
I can see this from two sides - my (now ex) wife went through getting temporary then permanent residency in Australia; yes, it was a pain and expensive, but Australia has high standards of living etc, which is why lots of people want to come here. The other side is this - immigration is one of the reasons why there are not enough houses to buy or places to rent, making life difficult for citizens or people who have PR or TR. So if the process of having more immigrants who also require housing is expensive or difficult, I think you'll find a lot of people are not particular sympathetic.
Japan immigration (if you have a college degree) seems to be pretty high up there. PR takes a while, and processing is a bit of a black hole, but generally speaking you apply, application extends your visa a bit, and they get back to you within the period. And it’s maybe $100?
People complain but its generally predictable save for applications for a 3 year visa can lead to a 1 year visa or a 3 year visa or a 5 year visa
AFAICT, Japan has the easiest immigration for skilled professionals, by far. However, this has been the case for less than 10 years, as they totally revamped their immigration laws in the 2010s sometime to try to attract more such people, so of course it's going to take time to see the difference. Japan is also somewhat difficult for foreigners to live in because of the language barrier, but Germany isn't that different here: in my experience as a tourist there, it's nothing like Netherlands where everyone and their dog speaks perfect English. In Germany, the college-educated people generally speak it quite well, everyone else, you're lucky if they know any at all, and it seems like you won't do well living there if you can't speak the language. In Japan, it just depends on your company: a lot of people here have lived here for years or decades and still don't speak Japanese, because their job is in English. German is probably easier for European-language speakers to learn though.
My experience in East Germany was that even waiters spoke pretty decent English and would switch to it at any opportunity. Not quite Holland, but not far off. I had a friend who had lived there 10 years and still didn't speak German.
I think that's an eastern Europe vs western Europe issue. In my experience as a tourist in both, people in eastern European countries (like Czechia and also Hungary) had much better English skills than people in (mainly former West) Germany. Even since the fall of the wall, eastern Europeans seem to have eagerly learned western ways and that includes English, whereas western Germans were already western, but didn't need to know English for that. East Germany is still quite different from west Germany (except Berlin, which is unique).
> it's nothing like Netherlands where everyone and their dog speaks perfect English. In Germany, the college-educated people generally speak it quite well, everyone else, you're lucky if they know any at all, and it seems like you won't do well living there if you can't speak the language.
There are 2 kinds of countries in Europe:
- Those where movies and TV shows are dubbed: Germany, France etc. Especially the older generations and working class don't speak English too well
- Those where movies are English with subtitles: Many of the smaller countries with their own native language. So everybody is exposed to English all the time and many speak English pretty well.
(Have not watched movies in the Netherlands, but I could guess many are not dubbed?)
> Japan is also somewhat difficult for foreigners to live in because of the language barrier, but Germany isn't that different here
In the case of Japan, you also have the insanely difficult writing system, probably the most difficult writing system in current usage. The German language might be difficult, but at least it uses an alphabet with a somewhat consistent spelling.
The writing system isn't that big a deal. For daily life, it's more important to be able to converse in basic/conversational Japanese, not to be able to read literature, and you don't have to read kanji to talk to people. Just learning katakana is enough to read all the foreign loanwords (which are everywhere these days), and knowing hiragana + some basic kanji is really plenty to get by. For reading anything more difficult, just use Google Translate's camera ("Lens") function.
You’re correct, but as a foreigner that lived in Japan for 3 months, it gets very old constantly having to use google lens or translate just to go grocery shopping. In most European countries, people will know a tiny bit of broken English at least, and most of the words you can figure out on packages/signs by their roots.
I loved living in Japan, but even where I lived in Shinagawa, it was very rare finding someone with any English skills at all unless they were young and college educated in the states.
>In most European countries, people will know a tiny bit of broken English at least, and most of the words you can figure out on packages/signs by their roots.
I mean, what do you expect? European languages are all related to each other, so of course it's easier to figure things out by roots. Japanese isn't even remotely related to English, except through borrow-words. That said, I'm usually able to figure a lot of things out by simply reading the katakana, since 95% of the time it's just a borrowed English word. Of course, this depends a lot on what you're looking at: western foods almost always use katakana borrow-words, Asian foods almost never.
I strongly disagree. Yes, speaking is more important than reading, but being illiterate in a modern society is not fun. And as the other comment said, having to use your phone all the time gets old really fast.
> German is probably easier for European-language speakers to learn though.
This is a bit of an understatement. Japanese is a category-V language, taking an estimated 88 weeks of full-time study to learn, while German is a category-II language taking just 30 weeks.
Australia "what countries have you been to and when" is fun, if you have traveled a bit. I thought being to Tunisia during arab spring and China and Russia might be issues! Overall it was hours of paperwork. Wife's grandmothers maiden name kinda crap in there too IIRC. Upside is Citizenship was relatively easy after this (because you have done PR already). Just had to learn some stuff about what happens in Canberra :-).
It took me almost two years to get my permanent visa in Australia (Liberals were in power at the time and had just gutted the immigration department shortly before I applied).
However, I did not have any issues with the bridging visa. It gave me full rights to employment, medicare, and fair taxation (unlike the Work and Holiday Visa I started with, which drastically limited my ability to work, had me paying all medical expenses out-of-pocket, and taxed all my income at the highest tax bracket), and I traveled overseas a few times on it without any issues.
The application fees were expensive, but the bridging visa more than made up for it. I made much more money on the bridging visa than it cost me to apply, so even if my application had been rejected, I would have come out far ahead financially and had a lovely 2-year working holiday in Australia — far better than what the Work and Holiday Visa offers.
Some of the US citizen-facing services are very backlogged too. For example, it's around 18 months to get a response when you apply for the US-Canada travel fast lane ("NEXUS").
It is at least valid in the meantime, and doesn’t affect travel rights like the immigration examples mentioned in various countries, but I agree that this is mildly annoying.
As far as I know, it's par for the course for immigration in most countries I ever heard of. On the other hand, anyone who heard of consistently nice immigration procedure for normal people (not Messi) should chime in.
From a incentive strucutre POV, they lose nothing from false positives (denying entry to someone who would have been fine) as candidates will probably try again anyway, and no one will come after them for their shitty procedures as by definition applicants aren't full voting citizens and stay in a weaker position possibly all their life (imagine filing a complaint and having your name on a black list the rest of your immigration life, even if that list probably doesn't exist. That fear alone is enough to let a lot of things slide)
Other countries that see immigration as an opportunity have systems that are far far superior to that of Germany. In Germany it's often not clear what status a process is in and no way to get updates. There often is no web portal or anything like that, it's nuts. For instance you submit an application for the retention of your German passport and then basically wait 2+ years for the answer to come back. No one answered my questions. It's very frustrating. On top of that I got threatened with the BKA if I didn't surrender certain documents without ever having been asked to in the first place. Straight to escalation. It's just very unpleasant. Maybe that should be their motto.
Yes, the country needs to be both competent and strongly willing to court new comers and permanent residents in the first place.
On your experience, it really feels like a PITA. It won't help, but Japan and France are basically the same. You'll see procedures listed as typically taking 2~3 months, check back every now and then, and low and behold a year and half later you have absolutely no idea of what's going on, if your submission has been forgotten or is contentious. There's no recourse as long as you haven't been refused, so it's limbo until something happens.
People are right to bitch about these lengthy and utterly frustrating procedures, I just don't see a way out of it short of being rich, famous or finding a loophole that lets you force a government agency do something in a timely manner without getting a target on your back.
To note, France had much progress in the last decades, in that bullshit requirements were made illegal a few years ago. At least you can check everything needed on an official site and not be subjected to petty additional requirements when dealing with the local entity (yes, that was a thing, probably to make it extra hard for specific portions of the population to properly file procedures)
><but Japan and France are basically the same. You'll see procedures listed as typically taking 2~3 months, check back every now and then, and low and behold a year and half later you have absolutely no idea of what's going on,
When did you have this experience in Japan? In my experience, immigrating to Japan is a breeze. Even during Covid, it took about 2 months to process my work visa, and from there everything was fast and easy.
PR is pretty slow, though: my coworkers who have applied are reporting wait times of about 9 months.
That might be the difference between the types of visa.
The standard spouse visa was around 4 months (during covid as well) when it should have been pretty quick according to the clerk receiving it. Tried PR at two different times, first time I moved abroad after half a year, before it finished, second time was a year and half from now and it's still pending with no update.
On any of the visa I applied for I'm meeting the criteria on multiple standards (e.g. I'm both a spouse and father of a national, and employed locally) and never got a rejection, so it's just plainly taking a huge amount of time. I got used to it though.
PS: also it's hilarious to write about your romance with your partner, detailing your dates, attach Disneyland photos etc. and imagine officers in their suits reading all of that with straight faces.
>Other countries that see immigration as an opportunity have systems that are far far superior to that of Germany.
Do you have any examples for this? Genuinely curious.
From where I stand most EU countries right now are talking steps backwards on this as they've become overloaded with migration waves, housing shortages, stagnating wages, which increased the far right support, so the hot topic now is how to discourage ALL immigration, not how to make life better and easier for SOME immigrants to attract them.
Sure, you obviously want to encourage the useful skilled immigration, but like I said, from where I stand it seems countries don't distinguish and are trying to make life hell for all immigrants just to plase the right wing voters since those would be frothing at the mouth if they heard their government is rolling out the red carped to attract SOME immigrants, so then for simplicity the political issue is binary, IMMIGRANTS or NO IMMIGRANTS.
As someone that became a permanent resident and later a citizen of Canada, the process was relatively painless compared to what I read for other countries, and could be tracked along its different steps using a web UI.
Hell no. I applied for citizenship over a year ago now and no communication has been made with me. I'm also not sure where this "up to 10 months" is coming from because when I applied (and recently checked) it says "over 2 years". On top of that I'm not sure what reddit you're looking at, but the ones I'm looking at are constantly complaining about how long the process is taking - how they expected it in 2022 and are still waiting in 2024.
Also this "web ui" is so bad and difficult to work with. I lost all the data I input at least twice, also the forms do no seem up to date with the requirements (requirements on newindenmark are different from what is presented on the form).
> From a incentive strucutre POV, they lose nothing from false positives
I strongly disagree. If you try to attract skilled labour, such hurdles can keep many of them at bay. Germany can become known as a country that's not worth the fight. I have seen a _lot_ of stories about people giving up and leaving, usually because of immigration office delays, but sometimes because they were worn down by other demands.
It also affects the bottom line as Germany becomes a country businesses avoid, either because it's too much effort to set up the business, or too much effort to attract international talent.
You are right that immigrants are invisible as a voter base, but the cumulative effects of their neglect are significant to the German economy, and to the pensions of people who can vote.
The entire second paragraph is negative selection. Some countries like Germany, Switzerland, US are highly desirable but there is no reason to be so arrogant about it. This way e.g. Germany chased away entire generation of millennials from post-Communist countries. Now Germany is receiving the profile of immigrants they deserve - they have a handful of passports and diplomas each, and most are forged.
I am a bit flummoxed how you can stay in the country after a permit expires. I’m not for stricter rules but I’ve heard this from several people (I think people in the US as well) and it seems like “permit to enter/leave” is a very weird structure instead of “permit to be here”.
I think most immigration offices in the world are pretty much black boxes, mainly because that’s their coping mechanism to deal with the influx of bargaining from rejections they would otherwise have. But it would be nice to have… some proof of progress.
> I am a bit flummoxed how you can stay in the country after a permit expires.
In many countries this is viewed as "it's not your fault, it's the state's fault that the state hasn't processed your application yet, so we will not punish you for the state's tardiness"
Hmmm… that makes more sense. My experience was getting a visa automatically extended for N months on application, and applications not ever being processed slower than that. But I can totally see the US having wild backlog, for example
This exists in Canada as well. Ad long as u apply for the next resident permit (e.g. student permit) before the old one expires u have an „implied status“ that continues as long as u don’t leave the country.
> I am a bit flummoxed how you can stay in the country after a permit expires.
I think most countries are like this. Essentially, you are in a "on-hold" status until immigration decides your fate. It's supposed to be temporary but it can take years depending on the country and the circumstance.
My sympathy for your troubles, but please keep in mind:
Everybody is processing Ukranians and Arabs. The system was never meant for such a rapid influx of people.
The people working on immigration are not lazy or unmotivated, they are exhausted.
Have you gone through the process? The system wasn’t “designed” at all, it’s completely broken and chaotic. It is 100% the fault of this system and not that of the immigrants going through it.
Some of the people involved can also be extremely unpleasant to deal with, even if you speak German.
I accompanied several friends through the process.
My observation was that by simply changing the view on what is happening and extrapolating how to act based on that one can achieve quite a lot.
I told people the following:
1. The person dealing with you is not there to help you, they are simply executing an act of governance. Rather than wanting them to help you, try to help them close their tickt.
2. You are the type of immigrant people actually want. These popele see lots of drama, lies, heartbreak and hopelessness. If you are pleasant and well prepared they will probably like working on your case since it will not make them feel bad.
3. Things take time. Be as early as possible with everything and realize that there early is a way to speed things up.
Keeping those three things to heart worked very well. That does not make things faster, but it takes a lot of frustration out of the process.
This is a brilliant view and probably applies to most situations when a person has to process something - not just government and not just Germany. Very, very few people outright don't want to help - if you come in trying to be the light in their day, they'll WANT to help you get your things done quickly and efficiently, and vice versa.
A kind reminder, thanks @niemandhier
To me this is a weird view of government services. I'm paying taxes to have a system serve me, and to have processes support my life not the other way around. Leaving all emotions out of the equation, the job of the jurisdiction under which I fall is so facilitate my legality so I can pursue a productive and enjoyable life. If I'm paying taxes and I'm expected to pitch in the governmental effort, then that's not where I want to be.
Everything is full of humans, but private companies with terrible processes workers would usually have consequences that demand some change. Government services have no competition sos they are exempt from consequences if they're terrible.
Can you read my previous point? Vodafone Germany has competition, I'm not forced to be their customer if I don't want to, but I can take my money elsewhere.
Meanwhile I can't choose between other government services while in Germany but those terrible forced upon me by the state.
Before the war when I studied Russian, I had the unpleasant experience of having to get a Russian visa, which is usually subcontracted to "VFS Global", a private company. Didn't do anything to improve the experience at all.
Plenty of exceptions to that – broadly speaking, oligopolies, but generally anywhere with low competition like the only convenience store in a locality, rural broadband, etc.
There is no perfect competition, supply doesn't perfectly meet demand, and incentives aren't always perfectly aligned ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In any case, government services change through policy and, thus, indirectly, through the electorate. But a) it lags, b) is not the only issue the electorate care about, c) the supply of money is not infinite, d) the supply of labour is not fungible and e) in this specific case, policy on immigration is generally driven by people not immigrating, so the incentives are not aligned.
When you pay for a service, public or private, you are still dealing with humans that are not your slaves.So be kind and you'll get a better time or be entitled and you'll go to the bottom of the pile.
So much this. As a ukrainian, I have been immensely helped by the government officer in Germany while applying for temporal protection - just by being nice and understanding.
Still took months with no success, because the German bureaucracy is in complete disrepair and is brain damaged.
Not myself, but I accompanied my wife every time, and she’s now a permanent resident. The last time we just wanted to extend her temporary residence permit, they even advised us that we have no reason to do that and could just apply for permanent residence (which we then did).
Waiting times are annoying, but that is because of an overloaded system, everything else was pretty painless.
I'm glad it was straightforward for you. I've gone for a number of temporary visas and had mixed experiences. I was in a very similar situation on my last visit and was, like your wife recommended to go straight for permanent residency, which ended up being a 6 month process with multiple visits and dealing with about 4-5 different people. This was all happening during the immigration reforms so that might have been a large part of the problem (requirements changed mid-way through).
Absolutely not. I've lived in 2 cities in Germany for 2 years and Germans are the nicest people I've ever met. That's my second immigration and I travel a lot, so I can compare.
That’s nonsense. The Ukrainians go through an expedited process. Before the war we put in an application for my spouse - 3rd party national spouse of an EU citizen process - we applied pretty much the day after we arrived and a few days before we left the country to live elsewhere (2 1/2 years later) we got a letter that they are considering giving her an appointment.
I went down to the local Ausländerbehörde in Berlin (a place where foreigners register with the state), having very very minimal German. I was promptly handed a form in German to fill out. More than slightly flustered and in a bit of rush to get it done, I put down "25" in a box that I thought was age, but in actuality was the number of times you were married. Never much helped my application that I think!
This happened to me recently in Switzerland (canton Geneve for insiders, that already explains a bit), but for 12 months.
After being here for 10+ years straight, fully working. Existence of my whole family here and our whole life depended on it, yet I clealy hit a very incompetent (and completely unreachable) bureaucrat. My boss went through same process during mine, 3 weeks and done.
The difference? He is from western part of EU, I am from eastern. Shouldn't make a difference just like colour of skin shouldn't, but it does, in 1000 ways, subtle or not, but this was by far the worst and coming from state/canton.
Utterly miserable and prolonged experience, being in legal vacuum with small kids, while doing everything precisely and timely just like Swiss do and like to see in immigrants. Lost quite a few ideals about Switzerland during those desperate times.
The same kind of thing happens in the US. A relative (a Brit) needed to renew his visa, put in the application and heard nothing for months, and a immigration lawyer told him that it could take over a year to process.
But the lawyer also said that it would be worth trying a consulate overseas, as they were often a lot more efficient. So (as his wife had business in Berlin) he made an appointment with the consulate in Frankfurt. From interview to getting his passport back with visa - five days.
Uhm... In Chile I was in same limbo for almost 4 years - my temp residency expired, before the expiration had option to either leave the country or request permanent residency. I opted for the latter, submitted all the documents and... waited almost 3 years for the resolution. In the meantime I had my ID but it expired and I couldn't request new one. Supposedly with a certificate that I'm in the process of getting permanent residency I could use the expired ID but lots of institutions, especially banks, would simply ignore the law and reject the ID as invalid...
Note that I am a German. I would say there are few. Bad education, especially in schools, a broken railway and public transport system, as well as incredibly high taxes. You may say "free healthcare" and a point can be made here, but when you take a look at the high taxes you have to pay, it's not worth it, if your income is above average. All in all it's a mess and I haven't even begun speaking about German people and their mentality, as well as poverty and unsuccessful immigration.
Truly the worst thing about living in Germany is the apparent national hobby of complaining about things that perhaps aren't great, but really aren't as bad as you might think.
In practice, German schools are pretty decent, but they obsess about PISA scores and so neglect to ever notice what the schools are doing well. The train networks are fairly extensive, can be quite cheap depending on how you travel, and consistent across the country, but a lot of Germans would much rather complain about how late they are than recognise anything positive about the system. The general public transport networks (i.e. transport inside towns and cities) are amazing, and one of the things that I would most miss if I went anywhere else.
I think part of it is just that if you're German, you rarely see these systems from an outside perspective, so you only see the points that chafe regularly. But another part of it really is just that German tendency to criticise first rather than to view things holistically.
Somehow there should be a ranking of the foreign language abilities of countries. There Germany would do incredibly well.
It's strange that people obsess over math school rankings, but how many people do calculus beyond their schooling where as many, many people use a foreign language often in their work.
It's a non-BS thing people can learn at school and something that Northern Europeans do spectacularly well at.
I disagree heavily. Just because you have trains going everywhere (that's not a Germany-specific thing) doesn't mean they are allowed to be hours late. The transport system is broken, was destroyed by trying to cut costs in the past.
Same with schools and educators. And don't get me started on healthcare.
Your sentiment is part of the problem to be honest: Germans are always complaining, it's fine as it is bla bla. It is if you compare yourself to third world countries. But we compete with Japan, Switzerland, the nordics and so on. Also note that this is not a sentiment that is only found in Germans but also a lot of (high value) immigrants who move on after touching base. Germany has a lot of potential but utilizes that very little.
Why would I recognize anything positive about the transport system that has a high likelihood of making my trip a nightmare? It's literally the most important thing, to get me from a to b. That doesn't work with massive delays, cancellations, reschedulings and I miss my connections.
For what it’s worth, I’m German and live in Sweden and the train network is significantly worse than in Germany.
There are serious structural deficiencies at Deutsche Bahn, absolutely. But the gras is also always greener elsewhere. The nordics don’t have a better train network.
It’s bad enough in Sweden that a Chinese company has started offering the MTRX, basically the ICE equivalent between the two largest cities (although much slower, more like an IC) and that’s the best connection you can get. Imagine the outcry if that was the case in Germany for Munich-Berlin…
So I've heard. I once did a train trip vom Braunschweig to Narvik. Braunschweig to Hamburg was typical: the waggon I had a reservation in was not provided. So the train was not only late but overfilled. The danish train again from Hamburg to Kopenhagen was perfect.
The polar express from Stockholm to Narvik was awesome. On the trip down we had problems with construction and ice, so we were stranded in Abisko. We were taken with buses to a hotel, got food and even got a refund + 700skr deduction for our next trip. No questions asked. The experience was the opposite of the one you get in Germany. No bureaucracy. We got the SMS after Riksgränsen!
The next day I couldn't make my original train from Stockholm to Kopenhagen, so the train conductor just got me a new ticket for free. No questions asked. No bureaucracy.
Clear communication, situation well handled, all good. So at least this part blew my mind! Also the ticket control by just checking seats. Awesome.
I'm comparing this mostly to the UK, which is not a third world country. And to be clear, I agree that DB have been absolutely awful with delays and a lack of proper track maintenance.
But to present that as a full picture of the German transport system is to be completely myopic, and that's the issue. Yes, improvement is possible and necessary, but it's also nice to celebrate the successes of your country, and having a single system that covers pretty much all of the country, that integrates regional and intercity travel, that has a transparent and reasonably cost-effective pricing structure, that includes deals like the Länder-Tickets and the 49€ ticket, that is clean, and many other things besides feels like a success to me.
Do there need to be changes and improvements? Yes, of course! But this sort of self-flagellation ("oh woe is us, our transport system isn't perfect") is really tiring.
> I'm comparing this mostly to the UK, which is not a third world country.
I'm not so sure at this point. Comparing ourselves to the UK would be sad tbh.
Yes the 49€ ticket is a nice achievement. But again, it's not about having a perfect transport system. It's having one that is representative to our position in the world, our wealth etc. Buses are something of a gamble. Trains are notoriously unreliable. The same goes for a lot of regional/local providers. That's basic. Things like nice seatings, luxuries, food etc. would make it perfect. But you need to cover the basics first.
My problem with Germany at the moment isn't that it's objectively so bad - although you can certainly find places where certain things run better, such as Switzerland - but that it's getting worse and that for the last two decades, very little has been done politically to modernise. People and politics are happy with the status quo, not realising that in a changing world, the status quo isn't just going to maintain itself.
So I think we need some of that outrage you're channeling in order to make our politicians (and society) accountable when they become too complacent. But I also think it's not effective when you overshoot and start painting in a much worse light than it actually is - because all those other countries have problems too. There's a lot that went wrong with Deutsche Bahn (and it's of course nowhere near the level of SBB in Switzerland), but most of the time the system is reliable, decent and high-frequency and -density enough, which is something that is just not true in many areas of the world, even in Europe (there are enough places even in Europe where you wouldn't want to live without a car).
Heavily agree with your first paragraph! I'm contemplating on leaving Germany, because I think that this is just the beginning. Idiotic politicians wasting money on bullshit and not seeing the problems we have. More bureaucracy, less motivation to move things (let's all reduce the time we work), less value for your money, less security and more resignation. I don't see a path forward except me leaving this dumpster fire to be. I cannot build the life I want here and have the opportunity to leave, so why not ... I don't see any way how this can change without a bigger reset.
German whining is one of the reasons why I'm glad I've left Germany, but now I've just realized that this is exactly what whiny German abroad would say.
>Payroll taxes are typically flat-rate taxes levied on wages and are in addition to the taxes on income. In most OECD countries, both the employer and the employee pay payroll taxes. These taxes usually fund specific social programs, such as unemployment insurance, health insurance, and old age insurance.
Social security and pesnions aren't financed by taxes, in Germany taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose.
If you would replace social security and pension contributions by private insurances with the same costs people wouldn't have more money available but the Germany's index position would be better.
You could even double the costs and the index would claim an advantage for workers even though they would have less money.
They used the pension money for other things so it's logical to pay it back.
And just because tax money is used for pensions doesn't mean the socuial security and pension contributions are tax burden.
Like I said, if all social security was through private insurance the tax burden would be lower but the people wouldn't have more money.
Health insurance proved otherwise. As long as you are healthy you pay less but as soon you get sick more often it gets way more expensive.
But the later wouldn't be recognized as tax burden.
Tax burden itself is a useless measure, the total cost of living is better.
>Like I said, if all social security was through private insurance the tax burden would be lower but the people wouldn't have more money.
It won't be that lower. The German pension has existing liabilities that they must pay. Since it is backed by the state, it will inevitably be paid by the taxes.
Even if the pension payments were abolished, just to pay existing entitlements, the taxes would be increased proportionally. The public pension can be considered a plus in a young country with a healthy demographics. In a geriatric state such as Germany, it is a big burden.
The Tax Foundation simply presents the data collected by the OECD[1]. You don't have to trust them.
>Social security and pesnions aren't financed by taxes, in Germany taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose.
This is wrong. Because the pension contributions are not enough to cover the payments, every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions. The German pension system is effectively bankrolled every year with the tax money.
>If you would replace social security and pension contributions by private insurances with the same costs people wouldn't have more money available but the Germany's index position would be better.
This is also wrong. The other countries have social security (For example: Australia). Unlike Germany, they don't charge for public pension separately. The contributions are included in the income tax. So it makes perfect sense to include it in the total tax burden for Germany.
> Because the pension contributions are not enough to cover the payments, every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions.
Because the pension contributions are used for non-insurance benefits that should actually be paid for by all taxpayers, such as the mothers' pension or the equalization of pensions for retirees in East and West Germany.
BTW "every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions" proves social security and pension contributions aren't taxes. Tax money is a subsidy not the main source.
>This is also wrong.
That part is totally missing my point. It's about the ranking. Without public social security the ranking would be better but worse for the workers and just because it's a tax in Autralia you can't simply count it as a tax in Germany.
If you want to compare you need the total costs of living not the tax burden.
Tax burden is just leverage to help companies and harm workers.
Replace taxes by fees and the tax foundation is happy, the people not so much.
>If you want to compare you need the total costs of living not the tax burden.
>Incredibly high taxes? Denmark has higher taxes.
Why would you compare total cost of living to find which country has the higher taxes? It doesn't make sense. Besides, you claimed Denmark had higher taxes. It has been proven that it was wrong.
>Tax burden is just leverage to help companies and harm workers.
I would like to hear how you reached this conclusion.
>just because it's a tax in Autralia you can't simply count it as a tax in Germany.
Yes you can, if your goal is to make a fair comparison between countries. The OECD uses it for measuring the tax burden on income. Especially because, the countries like Germany use 'creative labelling' to hide how much money they collect each year.
>Because the pension contributions are used for non-insurance benefits that should actually be paid for by all taxpayers, such as the mothers' pension or the equalization of pensions for retirees in East and West Germany. BTW "every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions" proves social security and pension contributions aren't taxes. Tax money is a subsidy not the main source.
You've just proven my point. Because the money can be easily shuffled around, in practice, it is no different than income tax.
> And don't forget Germany has one of the lowest annual working hours in the world
Of course if you are a civil servant or part of some mega union, but for the rest of the private plebs it is often 9h daily(because lunch break is not part of contract) and most do a long commute(because of eternal housing crisis) which may raise it to 12-14h easily.
Mmmhh... I don't think the OECD data is not working comparing countries:
"The data are published with the following health warning: The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources and method of calculation."
Yes, in Germany are many part-time workers but overall mostly they are not working 6 hours the day . Normal is - afaik - 8 hours per day on approx. 220 days in a year.
Almost one million volunteer firefighters (Freiwillige Feuerwehr). These are 96.95 % of all firefighters. (For comparison: the UK quota is 2.31%.)[1] Very popular to participate especially in many rural parts of Germany.
Following and make the most pedantic rules. Germans loooooove setting rules and expect everyone to follow or else they rat you or or sue you even. (see neighbour conflicts about hedges growing too far etc)
> The best I'd say is a sense of collectiveness that is somewhat higher than other countries.
I wouldn't say that this comes anywhere close to many other countries in Germany. Societal coherence in e.g. Russia or Norway is much higher than in Germany.
I think it's rather the other way around: The countries you're comparing to might be exceptionally bad at it, and Germany is average.
Can you elaborate on societal coherence in Russia? This in particular piques my interest; what I hear from Russia is that it's a place where any interpersonal conflict is resolved with (verbal) violence.
interpersonal conflict has nothing to do with societal coherence tho... unless it's a social conflict. and let's say that social conflicts in russia doesn't happen anymore unfortunately. they used to be good at it.
Russia (with the exception of its ethnic minorities) is one of the most atomized societies in Europe, actually. The Russian dream is a house in the exurbs with a three-meter-tall impenetrable fence around the lot where you can do anything you want inside and no one will bother you.
I can't wait for the new Nigerian immigrant to swing his beer at Octoberfest arm in arm with the second generation Turk from Munich, all while the waitress, a temporary worker from the Czech Republic, rushes on.
It's not going to happen. Social cohesion is very low, and Germany failed to foster a sense of shared values among immigrants.
> I can't wait for the new Nigerian immigrant to swing his beer at Octoberfest arm in arm with the second generation Turk from Munich, all while the waitress, a temporary worker from the Czech Republic, rushes on.
Wait, isn't that what's happening already? I'm pretty sure the temporary worker from the Czech Republic is there, as is the second generation Turk voting for Erdogan. Not fully sure about the Nigerian immigrant though.
Indeed everyone is there. Except that no one is arms in arms with anyone - that was the point I wanted to make. The immigrants mostly live segregated along with their peers, and you rarely have the "melting pot", especially not at the lower socio-economic scale, from what I can see.
And that is not good for fostering a collective spirit. The order-abiding nature of Germans collides with the people from country that are more used to bend the rules, so everyone is stressed and unhappy.
I guess it's what you call immigration made in Germany.
Yes, I agree. There will not be arms in arms carousing..
> The order-abiding nature of Germans collides with the people from country that are more used to bend the rules, so everyone is stressed and unhappy.
Ah, there is a bit of a cultural misunderstanding right there indeed. In Germany, what is not allowed is forbidden. You need a certain rigidity of mind to be able to think that way. In many other cultures, what is not forbidden is allowed. Meaning that a badly defined rule leaves lots of leeway for a bit of creative thinking. Those are two different worlds careening towards an inevitable collision course..
The hacker subculture there is incredible; closest thing to late-1990s bay area (before the flood of money killed everything) that's still alive today.
But yeah, there are a lot of negatives counterbalancing that.
Yes. Live translation services are provided for the minority of formal stuff that’s done in German. Drinking beer in the alternative track, everybody understands each other after a couple of drinks even if they didn’t before.
The most beautiful cities at night, especially Dresden. You never need to own a car, amazing beer, awesome Turkish food, awesome dance clubs in old castles or rundown industrial parks; also life is 10 times better if you're a student :)
(I lived in Germany for about a year as an American college exchange student)
Orderly, rational people. Hard working, rich country, despite no natural wealth. No cutting corners, one of the reasons bureaucracy is so horrid. You are expected to have your shit together, still people are as lenient as they can be. Things work, you can trust people. Low crime, clean streets. Good sense of morality.
Country is capable of much more, still holds itself back a lot, preference in humbleness. Things are built on solid foundations. Not a bad place to be.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not - but in case you're not - seeing "10 cigarette butts" - instead of, say, piles of trash, dung, old broken down cars, and/or drug paraphernalia - seems pretty clean to me, as cities come.
Yeah, it's amazing how different peoples' expectations are. A bunch of cigarette butts would seem horrible compared to a Japanese train station, but compared to anything in Latin America it would be extremely clean.
Hardly. A lot of people buy into FUD without questioning it. A lot of people never question their government or rules no matter how stupid they are.
They'll just tell you to follow the rules even if you explain to them in a 100 page essay why those rules make no sense and are even detrimental.
They never acknowledge the possibility that their government/bureaucratic systems in palce can be faulty. If it doesn't work for you, then it must be your fault, not the system's fault.
It's the kind of blind trust in the system that lead to the Wirecard scandal happening under the watch of the entire world.
Rational people constantly question things, not trust and follow them blindly.
There's junkies fighting for crack in their underwear in minus degree weather right in the center of Frankfurt, shit and needles everywhere all around hauptbahnhof, come on.
Mild summers, good work-life balance, the European Union, decent healthcare, ease of travel, nature.
Even though I'm currently in a "it's complicated" relationship with Germany, I moved here by choice because I loved the place. These things are still there, but since I'm working so close to Germany's problems, I let it get to me sometimes.
A country that is incredibly rich in historical significance (both good and bad), cultural traditions, art (historical and modern), regional variety and nature. Cities are walkable, public transport is mostly decent (it's perfectly fine to live without a car if you're in the city), crime is low, poverty is low, the economy has been tanking a bit recently, but has traditionally been doing well.
In terms of mentality, Bavarians are very different from Rhinelanders who are very different from East Germans. Berlin is a bubble in and of itself and can't really be compared to the rest. In general, Germans tend to take comfort in clear rules and structure, and are used to a certain kind of cutting through bullshit, both of which may be a good or a bad thing. I'll also add that, to my knowledge, no other country has reflected its own role in history as deeply and critically as Germany has, which to me comes as a bonus even when there is a tendency to overcorrect.
Food is IMHO not great (except Käsespatzle), but beer is some of the best in the world.
Don't forget bread. Whenever I travel to the US I'm appalled by what is considered good bread there. Not throwing shade here, it's just what it is. On the flipside, buying Avocados here in Germany is akin to a crime against humanity.
One of my pet peeves is how Germans have amazing bread, but then put the blandest possible stuff (like very tasteless Cheese, and one leaf of salad) on top of it, while Italians have great stuff to put on bread but the bread itself is so boring.
You hear people complaining a lot since they like to and we live with crazy priorities like "time to launch a company in days" but in the real world if we had a choice of where you are born Germany will be high on the list.
Get married in Denmark: This not a joke, but my friends did it (German woman, Indian husband). It Germany it would have taken two weeks. In Denmark you get it done in an hour (minus the booking of the time at the civil registry).
I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast" is a requirement. I mean you've supposedly been living together for a few years already at that point, so why is 2 weeks too much?
Is the delay ostensibly to ensure the identities of the parties, and that's why it takes longer if any foreigners are involved? I could well imagine it being unconscionable for Germans to aver something they were not yet certain of.
So this is pure anecdata here, but as a foreigner who married a German, it took a while, but it was relatively little work.
The biggest issue was that we needed one of my documents (the birth certificate) to have a seal of authenticity from my home country, which then all needed to be translated officially. That took longer than it needed to because we didn't realise it needed to be authenticated and so we got it returned at one point and needed to resubmit it. But apart from that, it was mostly a case of waiting for the formalities to go through - that took a couple of months in total, but it required relatively little work overall. I suspect in total, getting married in another country would have taken more work to organise and arrange, although it would probably have been quicker with the right combination of country and pre-existing documents.
We ended up going the Denmark route due to the German process requiring, what was for us, unobtainable documents.
We've had a number of friends do the same due to similar issues, plus the German process can be very cost prohibitive once you start including official translators and such.
The Danish authorities accept a passport as a proof of ID, and the supporting documents can be in Danish, English or German.
A baby takes 9 months to develop, if you notice 2 days before birth that you should be married so that you don't have to adopt (or whatever other reason), that's just very poor planning on the parents' side.
And in actual emergencies, these processes can be accelerated, like every other buerocratic process in Germany
I have a friend who got married “on emergency” because her visa was expiring and she would have to get back to her country of origin if she didn’t find a job in a few weeks. So .. yeah.. could happen. And it’s also not just about the time .. it’s also about the amount of documents, forms and all the offices you need to contact.
> I fail to imagine a scenario where "getting married fast" is a requirement.
This rubs me the wrong way a bit, and it’s because it’s clearly quite obvious there are many reasons you’d want to get married fast (emergency health issues, unplanned pregnancies, visa issues, etc etc. can come up with a million reasons easily).
You are really asking in a very ungracious way why doesn’t everyone just simply live like an ideal German.
Me and two of my siblings have had marriages to facilitate work visas, permanent residence and access to health care during a pregnancy. (Also because we liked the other person, but like, we would have kept liking them regardless of whether we got married.)
Most pregnancies take a while, two weeks is plenty of time. Don't even get me started on how long immigration bureaucracy takes -- two weeks is a drop in the bucket.
I had to get married fast because my travel agent failed to get our wedding license to Jamaica fast enough for our destination wedding to be legal in Canada. So we got married a few days before leaving to Jamaica and had the pastor on the resort “officiate” for the family experience even if we were already married (nobody knew except us). The “two weddings” were only a few days apart. My pastor at home dropped everything to marry us the afternoon we called him with our dilemma.
These are the cases which Germany wants to avoid: "Scheinehe", where people get paid to marry and give the other person an "Aufenthalts- und Arbeitserlaubnis" -> allowed to stay and work in Germany.
Lets combat marriage fraud by making it a kafkaesque ordeal to get married in the first place.
Big brain move, how many innocent couples get caught in the net, versus how many fraudsters can you realistically catch (organized crime has figured out how to game the bureaucracy, no doubt).
Ironically, on the one hand, the government views marriage officially as a "contract"; on the other hand, if it is "just a contract" between two consenting adults, then it is considered fraud! It makes little sense.
I think it is outrageous for a government to allege, or even just to investigate, particular causes for marriage unless one of the parties was coerced into it rather than wanting it out of their own free will.
Just wanted to say thanks for your awesome work! allaboutberlin.com was a massive help when I moved here—and continues to be, whenever a new paperwork hurdle presents itself :). You’re doing great work!
Truly, it's one of the best and clearly laid out resources out there. I've found a lot of online resources around Berlin life to be frankly hostile (e.g. r/berlin ) to people seeking information on how to approach things like appointments and complying with state regulations.
allaboutberlin.com seems to be comparatively devoid of frustration and objectively lays out the situation + steps to be taken in each situation.
I often think about starting a community that functions like /r/berlin, but with a professional moderator like dang to maintain decorum, deduplicate threads, and generally keep the place tidy.
With Toytown Germany simply vanishing, there's both a need and a market for it. I just never want to be a moderator again.
>I often think about starting a community that functions like /r/berlin, but with a professional moderator like dang to maintain decorum, deduplicate threads, and generally keep the place tidy.
If /r/berlin is anything like /r/japanlife, the problem IS the moderator.
From all the comments in this thread it seems like everyone is in agreement Denmark has less bureaucracy.
Is it also a better place to set up a company? Do more companies get acquired from Denmark than Germany?
I got married in Japan so was curious about the differences. The two differences seem to be needing to schedule an appointment and needing proof of income. Doesn’t seem really much worse than most countries (tho I can get Denmark being easier)
I do place some blame on embassies not issuing documents in local languages. I’m not asking for proof I’m not married for fun! Extremely unhelpful, tho a good job generator for translators.
In the end tho, lots of these convos are based off of people coming from the Wild West of common law, which leads to the US government saying stuff like “well we don’t know if you’re married but you can sign an affidavit in front of us”. The American Empire, barely capable of a proper census!
Things can and should be improved, but I do think it’s good to be cognizant of the fact that many countries off of differing axioms (especially when it comes to things like the need/interdiction of knowing where your residents live)
The common law jurisdictions are simply more honest. If German requirements force people to marry in Denmark, and registering a foreign marriage in Germany takes 4 years to process (the actual waiting time in Berlin), then Germany doesn’t know if someone is married either. They are just more willing to pretend that they do.
> which leads to the US government saying stuff like “well we don’t know if you’re married but you can sign an affidavit in front of us”. The American Empire, barely capable of a proper census!
How would a census help? That's just you declaring your marital status in front of them, without having to sign anything; it has even less probative value than what you're presenting as a stopgap measure that wouldn't be necessary if the census worked better.
They can't function without it, so the list does exist. The IRS keeps records of residents and their marital state (a required piece of information on the form).
But those records aren't really fit for the purpose of certifying that someone is not currently married, because (a) they do not include people who don't need to file taxes; and (b) they are only updated once a year.
For pretty much every other administrative purpose, it doesn't matter whether you're married or not, so I don't really see why you'd want the tax records updated more often.
Other people have already written this, but Berlin is not a good representation for Germany as a whole. It has been known for decades within Germany for having a dysfunctional government structure and administration (due in part to unclear division of responsibilities between districts and the city).
Elsewhere in Germany, bureaucracy tends to be tedious but functional.
The neglicence of the state of Berlin is actually illegal in many cases. I once even asked a lawyer if I could sue them for their delays, but he wrote back to me to the effect that he was too much on good terms with them to sue, but that I could pay him some money (out of my pocket, of course) so he would go "talk" to them.
> Elsewhere in Germany, bureaucracy tends to be tedious but functional.
Data to back up your assertion that it’s only Berlin? I can speak for Düsseldorf, which is a total nightmare. Literally everything folks talk about regarding issues in Berlin also happens as a matter of course in Düsseldorf.
A friend of mine is high up in the NRW civil servants apparatus and he confirms it’s fucked across the board in NRW.
The bureaucracy problem is compounded by not wanting to link databases between government organizations and a general resistance to anything digital that involves personal data (except Facebook et al. for some reason), which reduces efficiency a lot.
However, this is understandable given German history.
Yes after eliminating or mauling those they don't consider worthy living ;) lol hahaha.
Seriously though if you're allowed to corner part of the population and brutally vent on them, next you'll need "privacy" to avoid consequences and revenge.
Sorry, I didn't mean it as an apology, it's more that I understand the historical context (at least that's what several Germans have told me).
I strongly prefer the system where I live, where I can pretty much arrange everything government-related from behind a keyboard and a universal authenticator (DigiD).
> So tired of this apologetics, modern German bureaucracy has been built exactly by former Nazis and Stasi agents.
The modern US was founded by slave owners, Spain was a dictatorship for longer than most of Germany, Poland was sliding into illiberal democracy until very recently, most of Latin America seems one recession away from a coup or revolution, ... there is a lot of continuity between liberal democracies and authoritarian governments. The roots of German bureaucracy also go much further back than the Nazi era (at least to Prussia).
I'm not really sure what using loaded language like this accomplished, though.
Post WWII era was the most impactful for the current state of affairs. The recent situation in Poland was nowhere close in terms of graveness in comparison with the other examples, no slavery of genocide was even marginally likely, not even hyperinflation.
>modern German bureaucracy has been built exactly by former Nazis and Stasi agents.
How frustrating for London and Washington to fight and win a war against the Nazis, then occupy (the Western half of) Germany for 7 years, imposing a new government on the country -- all to no effect.
De-Nazification effectively stopped once the US realised that Germany would be more useful as an ally against the Soviet Union, so in the first years of the new state you had former Nazis in important positions. It really was the next generation of Germans who, in the 60s, demanded more thorough denazification.
I only cover Berlin, but the relocation consultants I frequently talk to will confirm that it's even worse in other medium to large cities. The Berlin immigration office is doing well given the hand it has been dealt.
The immigration office in Lübeck, STB inner city, is overworked like everywhere, but they are competent, friendly, and decently digitalized. From what a US friend of mine who lived in many cities in Germany told me, it’s pretty much an exception, though.
Like everyone else here, I don't have any data (I searched, but couldn't find anything), only anecdotes - my own experiences from living in Cologne and Berlin, and those of friends who live in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, etc.
There are issues everywhere but Berlin is particularly bad. We weren't even able to hold a regular election without messing it up.
What do you dislike about the city stuff? I think all bureaucracy I had to deal with with the city of Düsseldorf have been better than the state or federal agencies. Kita Navigator, Straßenverkehrsamt, appointments for the Bürgerbüro were all working pretty well online. Not all the way, of course, but post COVID Straßenverkehsamt is a million times better than pre COVID Straßenverkehsamt.
I am familiar with both German and Finnish bureaucracy.
German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born...
Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everything centrally. A big brother nightmare for Germans.
20 years ago many processes in Finland went quickly, much more smoothly than in Germany. However, recently more and more authorities went into meltdown. It takes 3 or 6 months to renew a passport (or you queue in the street for many hours to get it done without an internet reservation). Certificates needed for inheritance processes delayed for many months each, so in the end heirs don't get access to their property until years later. If an elder person needs a legal guardian because they are unable to handle banking or similar anymore, you are more or less openly told: Does not make sense queuing, they will die first.
Where the degradation came from I have no idea. At least digitalization is not a guarantee that things work smoothly. In some areas (but probably none of those examples I mentioned) failed IT projects are the direct cause that processes break down.
As someone who was advised to wait 6-12 months for a tax refund in Finland (not a standard payroll/prepaid tax) [1] I'd say it's because 'the system' is still the old system from the past that hasn't entirely kept up with the fact that in this day and age:
- A limited company is not always a giant manufacturing concern
- An ever increasing amount of the population will not have been born in and will not be living their whole lives in Finland.
IT is a nice frontend for it and can serve you in many languages and with the latest and greatest UX - but the actual processes and decisions are not keeping pace. Changing these is a high-friction, low-reward endeavour for politicians.
I am talking about transfer tax on property which is completely different.
In my opinion, the tax card system effectively just moves the deadline for the tax return to Nov/December so you can ensure it's completely up to date then and not pay anything extra.
IT in general is stuck in blind valley and doesn't make anything easier anymore with its aggressive outsourcing and profit extraction. The only systems which go quickly and efficiently are those against the interests of an average citizen - e.g. the covid certification apps determining and limiting basic citizen rights. Oftentimes I prefer to show up in person with ID and fetch a printout with confirmation, than to install their bloated sloppy apps tracking the shit out of me.
They often try to recreate the paper process with IT, instead of making a complete new setup.
Example:
Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate.
Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail.
How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be much lower. A seal - and Germans love seals, they wank of to seals - can be forged much easier.
> Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate.
> Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail.
> How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be much lower. A seal - and Germans love seals, they wank of to seals - can be forged much easier.
That's an unreasonably high (or weird) standard. What country has a process like that? Switzerland certainly doesn't.
Aggressive outsourcing is hilariously out of touch.
Western consultancies win contracts to build IT systems. The project is outsourced to India for low cost. Indian outsourcing team hires the cheapest talent possible. Cheap talent provides cheap quality. Website is bloated and slow. Some person on the internet uses these systems, hates it and develops a strong negative bias for all Indian (replace with any 3rd world country) talent.
On the other hand, Indian Govt hires the competent Indians at fair prices. (These aren't even our best or that well paid). It treats them with (moderate) respect and allows them to own their projects. Indian Govt. websites turn out to be seamless, performant and handle 10x the scale of western IT systems. This is a recent phenomenon, but India's digitization of railways, covid management, aadhar, social welfare and UPI has been best in class.
Reminds me of when westerners visit India, eat at the most suspicious looking street food place, and inevitably get sick. You never want your street food (programmers) to be cheaper than the bar set by local middle class (or their taxes). Yeah, outsourcing will save money. But, have some standards.
There is massive corruption and lobbying in the decision chain. I cannot imagine responding positive, without any incentive, to a proposal "Shall we outsource this stuff to Bengaluru?". Anyway this applies mostly to corporate EU, profit extraction in public sector in many EU countries means rather hiring local software house with local students on some non-permanent volatile contracts.
The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments. These services are expensive and require staff to keep things going. Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend" and end up running more efficiently, rather than having a knock on effect and decrease the quality of the services. This is the policy direction responsible for the fall in the quality of public services in the UK, and for some reason Finland decided this was an excellent idea and is following suit. The SDP patched things up a little bit, but not as fast as things can be torn down.
> Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease since this will cause the public sector to "make do and mend"
There is some weird notion in populace that if we cut the funding, the public services will "get handle of themselves" and become more cost efficient. That's what a reasonable individual would do in tougher times. What happens in reality is that the nepotist core in public services will entrench and be fine or even better off, while the society will be told to suck it up.
Whereas if funding is increased, that same nepotist core will suddenly discover their spirit of public service and ensure the money is spent on better delivery, instead of further enriching themselves?
Honestly, the whole funding debate for public services is often so facile and ideologically entrenched. Both sides are right: Public services _are_ invariably inefficient, and cutting funding _does_ invariably do little to increase efficiency. But neither side will accept the validity of the other's argument and so we end up with this cycle of alternating governments imposing austerity and generosity.
The NHS used to be very efficient, when it was managed largely by clinical staff. Now it has as many professional managers as clinical staff, and they all have to be paid...
Also an awful lot of the NHS fuctionality is now farmed-out to private healthcare companies, who need their rake-off.
As far as "professional managers" is concerned, these guys are mostly NHS managers, not the kind of managers that could easily transfer into a private company. Their expertise is in some obscure corner of the NHS.
'Services' are things like education, trains, hospitals.
I don't want my taxes to pay for a desk that I have to go to to show my passport to someone so they can make me an ID card with the same information as the card that the man-with-the-gun-at-the-airport thought was OK enough to let me in to the country with, but the bank won't accept as strong enough proof of ID.
Bureaucracy is not a service.
I know basically nothing about Finland, and was curious about your comment as I find government spending an interesting topic. So the first thing I did was look up the government budget trends in Finland. [1] As an outsider it just seems that the Finnish budget is growing at an exponential pace? From 2010 to 2019 the budget went from ~50bn to 55bn per year, nearly managing to even create a balanced budget in 2018. From 2019 to to 2024 it seems to have grown to 90bn/year and is continuing to rapidly grow. There's certainly some expectation of an increased budget during COVID times, but it doesn't seem to be coming down, at all?
The central government took full responsibility of funding healthcare, social services, and some other government functions in 2023. Before that, large part of the funding came from municipal governments.
Then there is the war in Ukraine. Normally, Russia is one of the most important trading partners of Finland. But when it doesn't know how to behave, a large part of foreign trade is missing, and the economy suffers.
> Normally, Russia is one of the most important trading partners of Finland.
Partially explains why there is no light in the tunnel of the state budget.
But it does not explain why many authorities are struggling with services for residents which worked better a decade ago. It is not so that authorities would have experienced severe cuts in budgets or headcount during the last 2 years.
Finland has been a very poor country after WW II until the 1970s (compared to Sweden who had no war or Germany who lost the war). An economy best compared to Portugal or Greece.
The was a first overheating boom in the end of the 1980s, until a heavy recession took over in the 1990s. The next boom was Nokia driven in the 2000s until the global banking crisis. Since Nokia has fallen (well, it still exists but with a different business and more modest success) there has been little to no growth and heavy deindustrialization.
So basically Finland is back to the previous state of being a poor country with weak industry (I am exaggerating a bit). But the spending has continued to grow like the Nokia boom years had never ended.
Edit: Finland has one of the least favorite population pyramids in Europe. People getting older and no children. Very little immigration until maybe the last decade. And now a far right government with a strong anti-immigration agenda.
This is basically it, with the addition that Finland is no lomger in control of its own money. From the war up until adopting the Euro, Finland would devalue its currency a little over once a decade to keep commodity exports going.
The EMU is a mechanism effectively set up to extract wealth from the european periphery, for the benefit of Germany (and maybe to a lesser extent Framce). Finland is very much on the losing side, along with Greece, Portugal etc.
Perhaps with the difference that the culture is very protestant, with high trust in government. So rather than letting the situatiom deteriorate to what it was in southern Europe durkng the Euro crisis, the populace will flock to the stern faces speaking of deficits in the media, and dutifully vote them in.
> The EMU is a mechanism effectively set up to extract wealth from the european periphery, for the benefit of Germany (and maybe to a lesser extent Framce). Finland is very much on the losing side, along with Greece, Portugal etc.
Nonsense. „Devaluating the national currency“ is a euphemism for extracting wealth from the citizens without them realizing getting poor. The stability criteria are there to protect you from a government destroying your money.
I don’t get why so many Europeans think the Euro is hurting them economically while in reality it was holding them back (especially in Greece and Italy, their national currency was practically worthless). However, it takes time for member state governments to get used to an independent central bank.
I don't understand this putting the blame on the EMU. The demise of Nokia has nothing to do with it. Finland getting de-industrialized also has nothing do do with it, but with the openness of the European market which brought us incredibly cheap commodities at the expense of our own industry. Even Germany is struggling.
> From the war up until adopting the Euro, Finland would devalue its currency a little over once a decade to keep commodity exports going.
True. When Finland dropped 2 digits from its currency in the 60s the Finnish Mark and the German Mark where roughly 1:1. When the Euro was introduced 40 years later the exchange rate was 3:1. So 200% inflation over the years more than Germany which was far from stable either. So Finland was a high inflation country all the time.
I don't think high inflation countries are known for good economy. Finland for example had massive emigration. I don't think by having continued the high inflation route after 2000 the situation would be significantly brighter today.
I often see comments like this, but what's a good solution to the ever expanding cost of public services (to the point most of western europe now has gov spending at 40%+ of gdp)? You do need to cut back if you're starting to run a significant deficit or more and more of your budget will go on interest payments.
Any large org tends to get more inefficient with time as it accumulates inefficient components it can't get rid of, but unlike companies, government departments aren't going to go bust and close down.
I genuinely don't know a good answer here, but would be curious about other people's.
> (to the point most of western europe now has gov spending at 40%+ of gdp)
Perhaps that's fundamentally barking up the wrong tree. West-European governments in the post WW2 era have had higher relative spendings then that, without every financial expert and their dog declaiming that doomsday is near and services need to be cut.
We've been able to finance better healthcare before, we've able to finance better education before, we've been able to finance better infrastructure before, etc. So which costs have risen out of proportion to the point that none of that is possible today.
Which I think is partially due to institutions becoming less efficient with time as more organizational scar tissue accumulates (certainly seen a lot of this at the companies I've worked for). Plus gov departments tend to accumulate extra low-return responsibilities from politician gimmicks (the mismatch between what sounds good in a headline and whats cost effective).
Which in turn I think comes from scope insensitivity, we just aren't good at understanding scale and underestimate defuse costs.
>So which costs have risen out of proportion to the point that none of that is possible today.
It's not the costs that have rise sharply, it's the revenue and taxes that have declined since WW2 due to increased competition from globalization and the offshoring of jobs abroad, plus tax heavens aiding big corporation avoid paying taxes locally in western european countries, meaning governments today are missing out on a lot of income they used to get in the past, income which is now in places like China and in tax heavens.
I don't know of that's the cause, but it could be an interesting theory to look into.
But taking job offshoring, as an example. It could be fairly straightforward to determine how much tax revenue a car produced in, say, Germany, contributes to the economy, vs the same car imported from abroad. But where it gets complicated is that, German unemployment being low, the worker that lost his or her job to offshoring didn't turn out jobless, and by his or her work is still contributing to tax incomes. So what is the loss?
A lot of money is lost to tax havens, but the hourly productivity has also increased drastically, meaning that governments might still get more income per worker, per working hour. Governments are loosing in absolute terms, but have they lost income in relative terms?
The general feeling I have, is that a lot more money is lost to greed. As an example, we could take healthcare. It is undeniable that the average quality of healthcare has increased (for instance, looking at cancer suitability), but the cost of basic healthcare items have also, in some cases, increased disproportionately. (For instance looking at the cost of insulin in the US, or a dose of COVID vaccine, etc). So the general impression is that we are paying a lot more than before for only a slight increase in health and well-being.
And how does that apply to other trades? Construction costs have exploded, but we are not getting much better houses for it.
And therefore the general question was more: which parts of society are profiteering from forms of greed and price-gouging, how can we quantify that, and what can be done about it so that we, as a society can continue to improve on the care and the services we offer to our citizens, as opposed to accepting regression as the inevitable way forward.
Less bargaining power, that's a fact. But I'm not certain about the lesser wages.
I've been looking at the inflation + CPI index in Europe [0] over the 1990-2020 period. The result is that for an equivalent €100 in 1990, you would need to earn about €200 in 2023. According to [1], the wages in Germany have not increased enough (due to the well known wage stagnation of the 2000-2008 era). But the wages in France [2] (with data over the 2000-2023 period) have. Over the 2008-2019 period, the wages in both countries were increasing at the same rate.
The inflation + CPI index is not perfect, but it gives an indication of the costs changes of a "representative" consumer basket. With our sample of 2, this means that those basic costs have not increased disproportionately w.r.t. wages over the 1990-2023 time period. The pill was a bit harder to swallow for the Germans, but they also started at a higher level.
But what the inflation + CPI index totally fail to take into account is the explosion of other costs that now put single-income families in great difficulties w.r.t. a few decades ago. And the mechanism behind those costs increase is the one that would be interesting to understand and analyze.
But maybe those experts should've been raising alarm over this? Western Europe is doing pretty poorly when it comes to economic growth. And prior to that Germany got a lot of help from the US, Spain did not do well, Italy was questionable, Portugal did not do well. Netherlands did well, but a lot of it is down to their location as a place for trade. That only leaves France and Belgium. Did they do well?
>We've been able to finance better healthcare before
Modern healthcare is better than anything before. Even in its dysfunctional state it is better. Sure, you might have to wait longer to see a specialist, but the number of cases where the reply you get is "nothing we can do" is lower.
The things you mention are more expensive to provide today. One of the reasons is that our requirements for those services are much higher leading to much higher inherent costs.
> That only leaves France and Belgium. Did they do well?
Looking at France and the quality of their industrial output in the 70s to 90s, ranging from high-speed trains, rockets, passenger airplanes, Concorde, helicopters, (racing) cars, submarines, nuclear power plants, medical labs, etc. I would say yes. Their infrastructure has also been of high quality, so has the education system of their elites, and their healthcare.
And from what I could see of Belgium and their infrastructure, it also looked like that period was good for them.
> Modern healthcare is better than anything before. Even in its dysfunctional state it is better.
This is a more relevant point. The question is if we aren't well past a point of diminishing returns. For instance, for France, the data shows that the life expectancy of women was increasing by 2 years every 10 years, until 2010. It has increased by 0.5 years since then. The life expectancy of men followed a similar trend.
In fact, we might not have seen the full effect dysfunctional health care just yet, and we could be riding on the momentum of previous gains. And the ever increasing delays to see a specialist can only have detrimental effects in the long term. In parallel, the disproportionate increase of healthcare costs per patients means that, at some point, life expectancy is going to go down.
> One of the reasons is that our requirements for those services are much higher leading to much higher inherent costs.
No, I don't think I agree. The house you are getting has not improved 3 fold in quality compared to 20 years ago. The roads you are driving on are not 2 times better. Train travel is not a lot safer, nor faster, nor with more frequent service. On the contrary. The food quality in your supermarket has not improved. The electricity you use still has the same voltage and the same frequency. The clothes you wear are not of higher quality.
France also has kind-of a colonial empire still going on. Could that have an effect?
>The house you are getting has not improved 3 fold in quality compared to 20 years ago
That's true, but there is likely the 80/20 principle at play. Every additional level of quality costs more and more to achieve. Not to mention that often the increase of quality isn't really noticeable. Eg lead paint vs not, better wiring (fewer house fires), better insulation (lower heating costs), better air circulation (less mold) etc.
You also have the problem of survivorship bias. The old homes that are still used today are the probably the better ones. The worse ones from back in the day just didn't last.
But all-in-all, I can only suggest reasons. I'm from a former Soviet state. Some of the transformations are that good. Eg sidewalk roads actually feel 2x better if not more. These days they are nice and smooth roads you could skateboard on. Back in the day I'm not sure I would even want to ride a bicycle on them because they looked like the surface of the moon. And clothes are much cheaper in relative terms and even in absolute terms. But I think this is an exception and not a general trend.
> France also has kind-of a colonial empire still going on. Could that have an effect?
They were officially post-colonial by that time, and what is left is perhaps more a financial drain than a net income gain, although geostrategically invaluable.
> Every additional level of quality costs more and more to achieve. Not to mention that often the increase of quality isn't really noticeable. Eg lead paint vs not, better wiring (fewer house fires), better insulation (lower heating costs), better air circulation (less mold) etc.
They might increase cost, or they might not, as they are logical continuation of progress (as in, does lead-less paint really cost more to produce than leaded paint?) but in the end, they are "marginal" costs on a house, maybe in the order of 15%? So by themselves, they are not going to increase the price by 300%.
> I'm from a former Soviet state.
That brings a very different perspective, yes. Having spent quite a lot of time in eastern Europe, it is clear that the life experienced in that period was very, very different, and that many improvements where brought in, in quality and quantity.
But taking the road example, if you go to Belgium, you will have the joy of experiencing the inverse phenomenon, with a decrepit infrastructure that has been much, much better in the past. Imagine the moon surface you described, and then on a motorway, with cars driving by at 130 kph.. I've seen motorway signs covered in moss, as if an apocalypse had hit.
For clothes, I have items that were bought at the turn of the century and are still "wearable", but no recent clothing item seem to survive more than a year or two, independently of the cost. Which is an annoyance: I wouldn't mind paying more for something that lasts, but, so far, haven't found a brand that does. Of course, the current state of affair is an upgrade on the quality and quantity of clothing that was available in ex Eastern-block states. (Although, as bad as the fabric and colors were, I can only assume that they were built to last?)
High government spending doesn't mean the government is bigger necessarily. The big expenses are just getting moved right back out to the private sector for agricultural subsidies, energy subsidies, etc...
The better metric would be how many employees work (directly or indirectly) for the government and then compare those numbers.
> Any large org tends to get more inefficient with time as it accumulates inefficient components it can't get rid of
This is really the crux of it. Same incompetence and inefficiency, we see in tech industry. Are there any serious studies on the disease that comes with scale, and possibly its cure?
> Austerity ideology dictates that there simply must be inefficiency in public services, and cuts are the cure to this disease
Over time I developed a more cynical theory. As politicians have extremely short-term understandings and targets, they abuse the latent momentum of public services to surf on the inherent delayed response before service quality goes down and gets noticed. By then, they can blame the cause on something else, and move on to the next cost-cutting measure.
Even if there is an outcry, they can gaslight citizens into believing either that a) it was not better before or b) the changes are an imperious necessity that cannot be reversed.
Either way, the personnel and knowledge has been lost, so the service (and the quality-of-life that came with it) are lost forever.
Excellent description, and further additions for the cynicism.
(opinion) Human society large rewards narcissism. Diligence is usually rewarded with exploitation. There's actually academic supporting the 2nd. Therefore, most politicians are largely selfish and mostly interested in being on TV, being the center of attention, and holding sway over other citizens. (Not all, just the majority). The only metric is "what gets elected." However, like "green" anything, the optimization is usually "do nothing, and color the corporate logo green."
Causes further issues. The optimization becomes, "focus on highly incendiary minutia, while avoiding anything risky, and maximizing viewer attention and anxiety." Issues that will allow them to say they're valiant, while exposing nothing especially damaging for the next election.
The American fiscal funding fiasco this / last year is typical. 6 months, and America finally has a budget. All the while, it's mostly arguments about minutia like "Homeland Security impeachment", who the speaker is, where Military can get abortions, whether a base will get funding, migrants on buses, and weekly CR shutdown "thwarting". It literally became weekly federal budgets around Feb-Mar in America... Meanwhile, a lot of enlisted in those abortion / base (yes/no?) states are wondering whether they're going to get paychecks. People on boats complain about having no ammunition to shoot with...
London's sewers are another excellent example. Dithering and dithering about repairs, about maintenance, about public toilets. Except the Thames is bright yellow, people won't go swimming, and when somebody asks, they're response is "well, btw, we're actually £18,000,000,000 in debt. Make -£2,000,000,000 per year. Have for years. Nobody even noticed. lolz." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Water Obvious optimization, nationalize while decrying the evils of the private sector. Quietly also nationalize the debt to the public in a line item somewhere that nobody writes about. Squander resources for years. Sell back to industry claiming the salvation of capitalism.
> Quietly also nationalize the debt to the public in a line item somewhere that nobody writes about. Squander resources for years. Sell back to industry claiming the salvation of capitalism.
Ah, the privatization switcheroo.
1) Have a state develop and pay for expensive and necessary assets
2) Preach that privatization is necessary because -something-something-government == inefficient.
3) Take prized assets at a bargain price. Under-invest chronically and strip valuable assets
4) Get paid again when company is re-nationalized
5) Goto 2)
To make the different steps smoother, you can add a good government-industry revolving-door policy. Nothing helps capitalism efficiency more than a bit of cronyism.
Renewing your passport is quick and relatively painless in the UK. Founding a company is also reasonably easy. This reads like you have some chip on your shoulder about "austerity" and are needlessly bringing it up here.
It is strange because as a Brit living in Finland there are a for sure a lot of things better in Finland when it comes to public services but renewing ID documents and setting up companies absolutely aren’t.
If the German government did "austerity" they wouldn't need half my wage to spend on literal nonsense. Look at the budget over the last decades, as if there wasn't enough money...
I've never actually looked at the German budget (quasi B1 deutschkenntnisse and no training in economics, what would I get from reading them?), what I can say is that it's very easy to fall into the trap described by Chesterton's fence and call for the removal of things because you don't understand them, not because they're actually bad.
For example, someone I used to know in the UK said much the same about his taxes paying for schools, just because he personally didn't have kids.
>For example, someone I used to know in the UK said much the same about his taxes paying for schools, just because he personally didn't have kids.
This isn't what I said. If I pay half of my wages to the state I would expect them to manage to staff government offices. Maybe besides defense, basic administration has to be the most important function of the government, as nearly every other activity relies on it. There is zero doubt in my mind that there is something less important in the budget than performing the core functions of any government.
Indeed, it was an example of the category alone, and not even intended to imply you have that specific detailed opinion.
Thing is, the stuff I linked to are all vague large-scale groupings, and I can't dig into any of them and say "Max Mustermann from the… *rolls dice* cultural affairs department, is spending too much on… *rolls dice* trying to promote Sendung mit der Maus to… *rolls dice* the Swiss" — and even if I could dig in at that level, I wouldn't be able to comprehend the value, only the cost.
(Würde jemand sagen, "von allem den Preis, von nichts den Wert", oder ist das nur die Uberzetsung des Oscar Wild Zitat?)
Social security is also the budget to allocate the money. It’s ridiculous expensive in Germany. For example. 3 billion is spent on jobless people… half of that goes to burocracy.
1.5billion per month is the salary of 300.000 office worker. So Germany needs 1 person to manage 10 persons … so why the fuck does it take 3-6 month until they reply ?
It’s , here the end of contract and give me money till I have a new job or for max a year.
> 1.5billion per month is the salary of 300.000 office worker.
A common suggestion I've heard, is that the cost of hiring someone is around twice their actual pay (things like insurance, HR, rent or maintenance on the office building, equipment, site security etc.), which means half as many case workers, and each case worker probably has 20 unemployed people.
> so why the fuck does it take 3-6 month until they reply ? It’s , here the end of contract and give me money till I have a new job or for max a year.
You could try working for them to find out? Ich vermute, dass meine deutschkenntnisse ist nicht gut genug für das.
My guess, based on all the customer support workplaces I've heard about is: 85% of the people in the system are basically fine, 10% have difficulty understanding the system, 5% are a colossal PitA who need to be constantly chased or are even outright disruptive — and most of the cost is with that 5%.
There may also be system errors, but I mean actual people — 5%, for various reasons from mental disorders, to being unaware how bad they are at the language (like my first two years in the country), and likely other categories, will need a lot of hand-holding to get through any particular system.
> The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments.
There was a right wing government in Finland before 2019 and there is a more far-right wing government since last year.
I don't like either of them for their politics, but I cannot see how they could be blamed for authorities getting increasingly dysfunctional. They have not done anything like fired 50% or even 20% of the employees.
Not every government less cavalier with other people's money is "right wing," not every "right wing" government believes in austerity, and not every implementation of austerity means just haphazardly cutting services to the bone and letting the proles figure it out on their own. So I think it's a bit intellectually lazy to say "oh the government doesn't work because those crazy right wingers intentionally broker it!"
>The degradation comes from waves of austerity politics by right wing governments.
This is nonsense. Your statement is flatly an ideological talking point in no way backed by actual practical evidence or a reasoned argument of the situation. Government budgets in most european states, (Finland included) have continuously gone up for decades and increase in complexity. A strong ideological focus on claiming "right-wing austerity" has been a common narrative despite nothing about these growing budgets matching that at all. The very idea presupposes that any current amount of spending, no matter how large, has no business being criticized at all and that it's "extreme" to argue that the state could afford to be more agile in doing better with slightly less % of GDP.
Aside from the fact that government budgets are at record levels of economic output anyhow, no, the state shouldn't just automatically have a right to these absurd budgets with any pushback being called "austerity". or "right-wing".
We had a right leaning government for 16 years and the “Schwarze Null” was the most important for them. Now nearly everything is a fucking mess or near its limit. We don’t have staff for the most important parts of society… but we are one of the country’s with the least deficit.. nice … and now we need als the money to repair the ruins . Germany is a hellhole. The austerity was only so that they can still throw shits of money on the industry.
For all it's many many faults, I have to say I'm sometimes surprised by how efficient some South African bureaucratic state organs function. To get a renewed passport is a 5 minute online form, electronic payment, and then a 30 minute appointment at a local bank branch to get biometrics taken. Then about 1-2 weeks later you can go and pick up your new passport.
Driving license not much different.
For most people, paying taxes is a non-event, and tax returns happens automatically in most cases.
Then the bad:
- Firearm licenses: more like months if not years in some cases.
- Birth and marriage certificates: 4-6 months
- Permission for building/construction/alterations: Don't even waste your time.
- Healthcare: get private insurance if you value your life.
- Public transport: lol
It's interesting how in sufficiently large and complex bureaucratic systems (Governments, Microsoft, etc), you get little pockets of excellence because somewhere in the mess of it all, there is someone who cares about their job, and they put the effort in to make it better for their users/customers.
In South Africa's case, these pockets of excellence are often and frequently replaced, because they are being measured by different metrics than what we as citizens care about, and deemed lacking: Party first, enable corruption, etc. So then you have these government institutions that every 10-15 years or so get renewed, and then coast on that renewal while it gradually goes to shit, before someone steps in and fixes it all up, before them being fired again for not allowing the right amount of corruption to take place. Vicious cycle.
This is interesting because I have the exact opposite experience. I'm a South African but I live in the EU, for me, I need to book my new passport 1 year+ in advance of it expiring because it takes on average about that long (if I pay the bribes).
I was thinking about exactly this was I was writing my original post.
I'm currently also an expat living in the EU. The common sentiment from a lot of other South Africans here is to go back to SA for a 2 week holiday to get your passport. Apparently dealing with anything home-affairs related via your local embassy is a total shitshow. People have been waiting years for birth certificates for new babies and such.
It seems that the intersection between Home Affairs and International Relations (embassies) is in total shambles.
What do you mean by that? Did Finland change location over time?
Also, two Eastern European countries that I have first-hand knowledge of: Poland and Estonia are much more digitised and efficient at those things than Germany (and, from what GP wrote, it seems Finland as well?).
The same processes that led to Eastern Europe in 80-90s ending up as a nightmare where everything took ages to be handled happened to Finland with the same outcome. Bad algorithms basically. Maybe PL/EST still remember how bad it was back then and make sure they are running better algorithms, whereas Finland has no clue how bad it can get due to a lack of experience?
I don't know why does everyone on HN think that Estonia is Eastern Europe when it is actually Northern Europe (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe). All of the Baltic countries are Northern.
The popularisation of the concept of Central Europe stems from some people being ashamed of being from Eastern Europe and feeling inferior to Western Europe. Eastern Europe is defined by the Iron Curtain whose effects are still visible today, while Central Europe is a category created purely by selecting a region on the map without regard for political or cultural factors, just to push Eastern Europe further East and exclude some countries from it. It’s fairly arbitrary. I don’t see Eastern Europe as inferior and am not ashamed of being from a part of it, so I see no point in using an arbitrary term like Central Europe.
Mitteleuropa is an old concept, much older than the Iron Curtain. For example, the old boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian empire catch quite a lot of it. I've been told that places like Slovenia are pretty different from places like Serbia, and similarly for western vs. eastern Ukraine.
In the case of Poland though only a tiny fraction of it was captured by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The largest portion was captured by Russia. Second largest by German Empire. I have great-grandparents from each of those.
Moreover prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain the term Central Europe wasn’t used much. After that though some people like Milan Kundera started popularising it much more out of sense of inferiority.
A subset of Northern Europe is in Eastern Europe. They’re not disjoint. In particular all Baltic countries are in Eastern Europe (as is visible on the map in the article you linked to (CIA World Factbook)) Eastern Europe has been historically defined by the Iron Curtain. Other definitions are fairly arbitrarily just trying to put a line somewhere on the map without regard for history and its effects on culture and politics.
East and West used to be be not only a geographical distinction, but also political one.
Estonia belonged to the East, even though not voluntarily.
They actively left the Eastern block when they had the chance (like most of the others, so the block is no block anymore), but the terminology lives on, especially used by people who did not suffer from it.
A couple of years I went to a technical event. The event T-shirts were red. Someone from an "Eastern" country felt very negative about that: "We had communism, I will never wear a red T-shirt."
Those in the "West" who don't have the history of suffering don't have any strong feelings about those old things. Many of those who suffered (either personally or at least in stories from their parents) can be rather sensitive about such "mistakes".
To me it's just about what was taught in schools to me, and what I can find on my own. If you Wikipedia Estonia, it says right in the opening paragraph that it is Northern Europe. It's also what was taught to me in schools. Admittedly, being born in '92, I am a first-generation free Estonian and never experienced the soviet union so I don't have any strong feelings of East or the color red, but it is true that Eastern Europe is often talked with the vain of ex-soviet block countries that are corrupt and stuck in time, which is simply not the case with Estonia and I feel just minimizes the work we've done since.
For what it's worth, while it does not often come up in a positive light on this forum (and others), Hungary has almost all processes digitalized. Passport renewal is an exception, but after a quick in-person appointment, you get your passport shipped to you in less than a week (usually), even to a foreign country.
You have your taxes prepared for you automatically, you just need to click a button to accept the draft. That said social services is pretty bad, especially for elderly care, but to no fault of IT services. They even have a free, state-provided VPN if you want to watch TV programmes back home, from abroad.
Same experience in Sweden. It took me 1.5 years to get to full European healthcare (i.e European Health Insurance Card). Only to learn that moving within the country, they basically lose all your health records. Seems digitalization is not quite implemented for any non-totally-daily processes and as soon as a single human is needed in the line, there are not enough people.
There’s always a lot of hand-wringing and FUD around giving people ID numbers, but never a coherent rational argument. What makes it a big brother nightmare for all humans?
Like all automation, having a database of your population greatly increases your efficiency, without regard to whether this power is used to do good or to do evil.
There are many still alive who remember the evils done by the Stasi, when I was a child, there were many who remembered the evils done by the Gestapo; when those are your core examples of a citizen database, such thing naturally seems "big brother".
The irony is the mirror image: America seems almost* totally willing to have private databases while disliking government ones, Europe seems almost* totally willing to have government databases while disliking private ones.
* to anyone about to reply "not I": don't be blind to the "almost", I know many here will be exceptions
All the things that surveys do but where surveys would be really slow, repetitive, and suffer sub-population sampling biases; and all the things that censuses do but with better temporal resolution.
So having a health database, drivers license database, social security, banking etc are all ok but creating a proper national ID system would somehow push it over the edge to where an authoritarian government can come about and take control of our lives?
Your argument boils down to “let’s purposely make our government inefficient because it might one day turn on us”
Which, judging from other countries, is actually the opposite of what happens.
The worst offenders of human rights and government overreach are the ones that don’t have their shit together.
> But for what do a drivers license database, social security numbers exist?
To keep bad drivers off the road? To suspend privileges when you kill someone with your car?
Social security numbers were originally created for linking people to their social security accounts but has now become our national ID because there is an inherit need for one in the modern world. The problem with SSNs is that they were never designed for their current use-case.
> And why should a country/state know your bank account number(s)?
A state will always have access to and the capability of seizing your account funds. This is a necessity for a multitude of reasons that I can list out, but I'll let you use your imagination.
Take a look around the world. Take a look at history. Autocrats don't need an efficient ID system to take control of their citizens. People willingly give up their freedoms and align themselves with autocrats when they use the same propaganda and fear-mongering tactics that have been used for centuries. It has nothing to do with the government amassing a database of their population. Once the autocrats are in control, they will create whatever system they require.
The only way to avoid tyranny is to fight for liberal values at the ballot box. Anything else is bullshit. Your guns won't do shit when your local militia is aligned with the autocrat in control.
> To keep bad drivers off the road? To suspend privileges when you kill someone with your car?
A document is not sufficient for that? Doubt it.
> Social security numbers has now become our national ID because there is an inherit need for one in the modern world.
Why?
> A state will always have access to and the capability of seizing your account funds. This is a necessity for a multitude of reasons that I can list out, but I'll let you use your imagination.
But not one good reason. For law enforcement, there are other possibilities.
> Take a look around the world. Take a look at history. Autocrats don't need an efficient ID system to take control of their citizens.
But pseudo-democracies do.
> The only way to avoid tyranny is to fight for liberal values at the ballot box. Anything else is bullshit. Your guns won't do shit when your local militia is aligned with the autocrat in control.
No. The only way is to send politicians with their political idiocies to hell and establish direct democracies. When the people have to participate in the organisation of a country/state (or better in a cooperation of peoples; is there really a need for geographical limits?), and discuss the distribution of resources, instead of just balloting from time to time for one or another political idiocy, don't you think they could make that way better than the current systems?
It sounds like these are just issues with processes taking a long time. In other words, that there are long queues. Of course that is a problem too, but it sounds like there's less "active time" and it's more streamlined, if still with long wait times?
actually that's not true: people in Germany have MANY unique IDs: they have not one but TWO tax identifiers ("Steuernummer" and "Steuer ID"), social security number ("Sozialversicherungsnummer"), national ID number ("Personalausweisnummer"), passport number ("Reisepaßnummer") and health insurance ID ("Krankenversicherungsnumer"), among others.
Yes, I know. But having many IDs means that your information cannot be found by the same ID in all offices and actually many companies, too. That's the way it works in Finland (Sweden, too). While that is a data protection nightmare from a German perspective it should at least allow efficient processes. But as I wrote efficiency is increasingly suffering in Finland, too.
Several of these IDs change when you get a new Personalausweis, Reisepaß, or Health Insurance, respectively. They don't identify you, but the document or contract. Some of the tax identifiers might be specific to you and a tax authority, ie change when you move to a different Land.
We've been arguing with authorities, send hundreds (not an exaggeration) of papers to different involved parties, but still, one and a half year after purchasing a bit of real estate, we are not even allowed to start building. This includes dozens of funny anecdotes, an example would be changed rules for the width of your fence gate - meaning that you have to scrap the old one and have someone build a completely new one because it was 3cm (!) to narrow. Of course, it would take weeks after applying for the building license before any of their concerns would be communicated to us.
I don't think digitalization would solve this. If you have a shitty process and digitalize it, you have a shitty digital process. I do think arbitrariness of the people involved at the government offices and the time it takes them to react is way more of an issue.
If you just give me a bunch of paper to fill in, with actually understandable instructions, that's fine. Digitalization would save me a day here because I'd get it directly, but that doesn't really help if it takes six weeks for the clerk to actually react.
> doesn't really help if it takes six weeks for the clerk to actually react.
Neighbouring country here. The clerk has to react within six weeks, but to satisfy the letter of law, the reply is "we received your requeat and it's being processed"
Your website is amazing and has helped me personally thousands of time. It became the first quick english reference for everything when I first moved here. Thank you!
I think that's vastly overstating how bad it is. Maybe it's different if you are a German citizen. Just as an example, I never did anything other than signing the contract to get a job. I filled in a single form for each of my two kids when they were born. We got the forms in the hospital and just left them there. Similarly for registering a car -- there was a single simple form.
It’s much less of a problem for people born in Germany because the burden is spread out over many years of their lives.
If you immigrate to Germany then you need to instantiate yourself in the German bureaucracy everywhere at once, and that bureaucracy has a hostile indifference to the concept of immigrants.
I disagree. This is not in any way overstating the state of things.
Have you ever changed cities and needed to change Finanzbehörde? Have you ever registered for driving school? Have you ever tried changing from one driving instructor to another? Have you ever got married in a district where there are no appointments for marriage? Have you ever been unable to take your children out of school to attend a family funeral in a different country? Have you ever purchased a car in a State different from the one that you live in? Have you ever had to experience the nightmare of applying for unemployment money? Have you ever tried picking up your child's sick notice without their insurance card, but just only your own ID?
I could go on and on... Not all of these are on the same level of annoyance/senselessness but there are countless more examples. The bureaucracy and stiff insistence on following processes and rules at the expense of common sense are everyday occurrences.
In my experience what is most amazing is how most citizens of this country just accept this and don't find it unusual.
What's so difficult about that? That was 10 minutes long process for me. I changed cities so I had to change the driving school as well and there were no issues at all.
> Have you ever tried changing from one driving instructor to another?
I haven't but my school encourages people to do that if they find that they don't click with their instructor.
When I was in school, we went to Spain on a vacation that cut a bit into school days (= after the end of the school vacation). So my mom told the teacher, and it was fine. The teacher said the holiday will be a lifetime memory and great learning experience, too.
However, I read several more recent stories where parents in the UK got into trouble (had to pay fine, or got in contact with the police) because their kid did not attend a few school days, but with the parent's consent.
Both countries have mandatory school laws.
> In my experience what is most amazing is how most citizens of this country just accept this and don't find it unusual.
Most Germans are obedient to authority, which seems one of the main reasons why the holocaust could happen (read about Milgram's 1961 obedience experiments worldwide, Munich "scored" top on this sad metric).
Also, people that have only lived in one country don't know it any other way. Perhaps everyone should move to Estonia for a year to open eyes...
You should see Spain... basically the same but impossible even to get an appointment. There are dodgy third-party people that sell them on Facebook (I guess they use bots to get them), that's how bad it is.
Having immigrated to Spain, it's not so bad. Everything is done digitally. There is a unique personal identifier. Something like filing tax returns is genuinely very easy.
As a German this never really happened to me. I even own a business here, not a GmBH though. Took one document to fill out about an hour of "work".
I really do not get these complaints at all. Even Taxes can be filled out easily with a pretty good online form. None of the bureaucracy ever happened to me, except it is annoying to book appointments. The only things that need addressing are the chronically understaffed government offices and the ridiculously high taxes which are constantly being wasted on utter nonsense.
I'm German and have a GmbH. Go found one; it's completely ridiculous. Not just founding it, but running it, too. Esp. when you know how easy it is in the US/UK/Sweden (the three other places I've lived).
Come to Italy, it can't be any worse than here. Here bureaucracy is a huge and very lucrative business. Getting a driving licence privately here is the epitome of stupidity. Honestly I can't understand how so many basic common-sense things in life are self-over-complicated just to favor bureocrats and state-maintained employees.
From the examples, I can only fully appreciate the marriage part. When a foreigner wants to get married in germany, they need to prove they aren't married in their home country yet. Getting these documents can be a huge hassle or even impossible. This made a few international couples I know go to denmark to get married.
Any process around immigration seems pretty awful, just based on the overwhelmed and (often) unhelpful offices (based on reports from the former friends again).
On the other hand, buying and registering a car was quite easy and possible online, besides picking up the car at least. (With some caveats though. Wanting an electric license plate at the time needed me to go by in person to show them the certificate of the car.)
To do a good job I need to be there and experience the pain firsthand. There are many subtle nuances that are really hard to spot from a distance.
This is why I never really covered studying or raising children.
German bureaucracy is hyperlocal. I rely on more and more on a local network of experts to do a good job. In Munich I'd be mostly starting from scratch.
However most of the website covers all of Germany. A smarter person would have started All About Germany, if only for SEO purposes.
If u really wanna have "worst of all worlds" though, i can only recommend Austria.
Basically it's the German-grade paper bureaucracy described here, but spiced up with a truckload of what i would describe as "negative global southern stereotypes":
- Everything has to be strictly processed by the book, but ...
- "the book" closes Friday at noon, no wait, today it was 10:00, come by next month, we only process such requests on the first friday of the month. Oh wait, Mrs Soandso is on vacation next month, would June suit you?
- the one managing "the book" doesn't like your face/surname/tone/something? You might wanna try another city ...
In short: it's all strict and utterly beaucratic like you'd expect in Germany, but at the same time ripe with small time corruption, incompetence, and petty xenophobia
(Small anecdote: I actually once had to get a lawyer to register a company, since the person responsible for my file at the business court thought my surname was sounding a bit too "foreign" and demanding I present a valid staying permit -- which I do not need (and therefore couldn't even get) in Austria. Straight up refused to process my filing until my lawyer requested a legal statement in writing)
I've been living in Germany for more than 7 years and I can only verify this. The offices in big cities are overloaded with requests and getting an appointment for things like renewing documents can takes weeks if not months. Not to mention the naturalization process which can take up to two years[0].
A solution for this in my opinion would be to centralize these processes and make them online, like making a government portal for the whole country. But for that many rules should be changed, which is highly unlikely.
You can't centralize them, as in, it's simply not possible because Germany is decentralized. It's not that many rules would have to be changed, the Constitution would have to be changed. It's completely impossible.
The processes are going to be online, this is mandated by law, it will take years, but it is being worked on (some are already available online). They will still be provided by the respective municipality.
I once saw a survey, possibly from the Annals of Improbable Research, asking how many people constitute a bureaucracy. My favorite response: One German.
See also: The Checkpoint Charlie scene from the 1985 movie Gotcha!
Another fun example: if you have a child, you won't automatically get Kindergeld (child benefits) even though you have to sign paperwork for the birth certificate. You have to apply for child benefits and parental leave and maternity compensation and you have to notify each relevant institution individually yourself.
There are good and important reasons certain public institutions aren't allowed to share data by default but instead of making that data sharing opt-in, it's completely offloaded to you personally.
Kindergeld is a fantastic example of something that should be a UBI. It's intended to go to the child and be spent by the parents on the child's behalf - legally, it's considered income of the child, not the parents. That's literally a basic income already and it's paid from birth until the child is 18-25 years old (depending on employment status or if the child is in education).
Of course because the FDP conveniently forgot that its "Bürgergeld" was supposed to be a form of UBI and decided to simply rebrand social welfare (aka Hartz IV) instead, we're now in a perverse situation where the thing that was supposed to be a universal basic income is instead very much not universal and even takes Kindergeld into account if the child is part of the household.
That said, turning the Kindergeld into a UBI would also mean abolishing the Kinderfreibetrag which acts regressive (i.e. in effect, higher income families receive more benefits per child than lower income families). It would also make it easier to justify closing the loophole of migrant workers collecting child benefits for children in their home country given that a UBI could reasonably be restricted to national residents rather than all EU residents (which is the concern with limiting child benefits the same way).
Just wanted to say "hey", when reading the topic and you nickname I thought is was you. The link in you commented confirmed it.
We met at verkstedt (Mario)
Hey nicbou, a fantastic website thanks for your efforts.
While reading your Bank article I noticed a potentially outdated information concerning ING as I am also an expat and was able open a bank account there.
"ING: You need German permanent residence or citizenship to open an account. Some students could open an account with a residence permit. Their customer support speaks English."
I'm rewriting it as we speak. It's my main focus this month.
Can you tell me more? When and where did you open an account? What residence title do you have and what is your nationality? Feel free to email me the answer if you prefer privacy.
Not the parent but I had similar experience: I could open an account by ING.
Opened end of 2022, fully online. I have italian citizenship; my residence title was just... resident? I had the Anmeldung for the apartment I was living in.
But it wasn't all easy. I needed:
- A german telephone number.
- A document (with a MRZ) with my german address in it.
- Not sure but maybe they also asked about my job?
The document was critical for me; I had to go to my embassy and apply for a new id that had my german address.
Also everything was fully in german, no english whatsoever.
FWIW, I got married in Germany (as a German to another German) and it was surprisingly straightforward compared to other acts of bureaucracy that I've seen.
Your site was a complete godsend when I lived in Berlin, though eventually the excessive paperwork was a major contributor towards my decision to move elsewhere.
A few other people I know who left after a couple of years say the same - endless bureaucracy and extremely dysfunctional local governance (eg: the clusterfuck with rent control where some people had to pay backrent) made the decision to leave easy.
Having lived here for 1.5 years, I can say that beraucracy in germany basically works in the sense of how bureaucracy in other lesser third world countries work.
Basically, the system works in general for the average population but is broken such that it affects most those at the margins (for example, the rich, the poor, those entrepreneurial, etc).
In other countries, when this happens, you see the rich paying their way to access while the poor generally suffer until some populist movement comes and promises to save them.
It's thus really not that surprising, I just had yo change my view on where I placed each country in this developed/developing country mental model
In third world countries, if you're wealthy (by local standards), you can grease the wheels with bribes, or better yet, cheaply outsource tasks to "consultants" who know exactly how to navigate the system and pay the bribes on your behalf, giving you plausible denialability. Need an Indonesian multi-year business visa? $200 to the right "visa consultant" and it's yours in days.
As far as I can tell, this is not an option in Germany, certainly not cheaply. Healy, one of the global companies that does this kind of thing, wants €14000 to create a GmBH for you, and I'm pretty sure that doesn't speed up things, it just makes it somebody else's headache.
brilliant comment! also, the average population doesnt know better, as they dont have a reason/possibility to compare, so they think THIS is the best possible solution.
> so they think THIS is the best possible solution.
Nobody thinks that. Everybody knows how much bureaucracy sucks, and everyone regularly rages about the insanity and traps. There are whole TV-Shows about the bullshit done there. But people can't change it, so they just accept it, and know it could be worse.
I'm very happy to be living and building business in Estonia instead. Establishing the company is easy and everything else except KYC meeting in bank can be done online. Also in Estonia companies don't pay any taxes on yearly profits. Almost all of the government officials speak fluent English except in the case where I wanted to have company owned car. Would highly recommend this option for others too if you can relocate easily. They even changed the rules in 2023 and now even 1€ initial capital is enough.
They certainly can. I think even people outside of EU can open companies in Estonia.
The problem is that you need to pay taxes in the country where the work was physically done. So if you have Estonian company while living in Germany typically the same taxes need to be filed and paid compared to having a GmbH in Germany. Plus you need to also do the taxes in Estonia as well so you would end up having double bureaucracy instead.
You can read about tax agreements between your country of residence and estonia to find out more. I'm not a lawyer and this is simplification and Can even be wrong but it's the best understanding I have so far.
> And then, if you pay it out from Magic Holding GmbH to you personally, then yes, you pay ~26% capital gains tax – but the huge benefit here is that it could accrue investment returns in the meantime!
This isn't an optimisation and doesn't matter unless I'm misunderstanding what is being suggested. Multiplication is commutative so it doesn't matter if you pay the taxes before or after accruing returns, as long as your goal is to get that money to you.
$100 * 0.5 (for 50% income tax) * 2 (for 100% investment return) = $100 whichever order you do the multiplication.
>. International “startup” banks like Wise generally don’t support this, so don’t even try! You’ll lose multiple days going back and forth with their support, like I did. You can open a Wise bank account later when you’re properly incorporated.
The real optimization is not using Germany companies to begin with.
I'm a US citizen and US resident, I had some German limited partners in a small hedge fund several years back. The offshore feeder was in the Cayman Islands, alongside the Master Fund. Both had bank accounts only in US banks. (All forms with IRS and other regulators filed no problems there, good to have a business bank familiar with these things.)
Now to those particular investors, wiring money to a foreign bank with foreign transaction needs was too much for them. The US being a foreign bank from their perspective. They just wanted to use SEPA transactions and transaction instructions that they are familiar with, which are (potentially) instant.
This US citizen was able to sign up the Cayman Islands feeder into Wise for an EU bank account no problem, had SEPA details no problem. Makes it super easy to swap over to USD with few fees and wire it to the primary bank account.
Its also important to note that Wise has high transaction limits. Like $1,000,000 per transaction is the limit, its not a daily limit. so even if you get a large LP its not really a limit just multiple transactions. Not perfect, but way better than many other fintech app solutions for casual use.
Before Wise it was nearly impossible for an American to get real Eurozone banking easily after FATCA treaty was ratified. But with Wise it was pretty quick maybe 1 business day with support in their business sign up.
One point against Wise is that their Terms of Service are very restrictive. There are lots of legal activities you're not supposed to do with them.
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[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 521 ms ] threadI can get an IRS EIN (tax ID), register an LLC, obtain a sales tax license (only required for selling stuff), and open a business checking account in about 2 hours in Colorado. Someone who knows what they’re doing and doesn’t spend time researching banking options could probably get it all done in 30 minutes.
Alternatively, a legal services company will do it all for you for about $500. If you have partners and want multiple shareholders, the price jumps to about $1000, but you can also do that on your own.
I am generally suspicious of rhetoric like "you're a little well off, so we can heap arbitrary amounts of bullshit on you and you shouldn't complain".
They can open an Einzelunternehmen (sole proprietorship) instead. You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that tiny.
> But also many ordinary inexperienced people can have that amount of money up front, yet still be deterred by the complexity of a 6 week long incorporation process as described in this article.
Back to my point then. If they're not ready to put up with okay-ish bureaucratic friction in the founding phase, they're not ready to open a company. Because if you think opening the company is hard, wait until payroll or tax season is upon you.
> I am generally suspicious of rhetoric like "you're a little well off, so we can heap arbitrary amounts of bullshit on you and you shouldn't complain".
You're completely mischaracterizing what I said. Don't do that.
Sole proprietorship doesn't have liability protection. That's not a small thing.
>You shouldn't (and cannot) go all the way to the complexities of a GmbH (LLC) if your company is that tiny.
"[Thing] is too complex, don't bother with it" is not an argument against making [thing] less complex. It's actually just a restatement of the problem!
Other countries make it easy to set up a limited company. UK, US, Singapore, they're all just a token fee and a handful of forms. I see no reason for Germany to make it so difficult as described in the article.
A lot of successful companies were started by broke college grads out of their dorms; they would never have gotten off the ground if they had to scrounge together the equivalent 25k euros before even getting started. Hell, I don't have a spare 25k lying around and I've been working full time for 4 years.
With this mentality, it's actually a miracle a German startup scene exists at all.
The _last thing_ a founder wants is to wade through useless bureaucracy when there's a product to push and Vacs to talk to.
But Germany never really was a founder's country, and much more ruled by big conglomerates it seems or small family business who did non-innovative things (the bakery at the corner - necessary&nice, but not innovative), than startup culture.
When my wife started her current business as a consultant, she was living off her savings from teaching high school. If you think every entrepreneur has €25k of capital, you need to reevaluate what your country thinks of entrepreneurship.
You can get the simple company type (disregarded entity) and all the advantages of limited liability with an LLC.
What would you need to mess up to be liable for huge sums as a single consultant company?
Imagine if you’re a consultant and for whatever reason, you get sued or worse. That’s what the LLC is for.
Suppose you find out your cvs editor infringes on a patent and you’re liable. Suppose some business suffers data loss and sues. These things do happen in Europe too.
Also, it’s just a matter of professionalism. A sole proprietor isn’t very professional and many medium-size businesses won’t do business with sole proprietorships.
Germany insolvency can take a decade, make getting a flat or even keeping your bank account a challenge and rarely results in debt relief to boot [1].
[1] http://www.privatinsolvenz-hilfe.org/en/german-bankruptcy-la...
If you are selling Hot Dogs, nobody will bat an eye if it’s a UG, but if you apply for a big software contract, people might be wary.
It seems to me that a sole proprietorship would do more to protect against counterparty risk, i.e. more of the person's assets would be available to satisfy the debt.
My guess is that counterparties prefer a limited liability partner to arguably insulate themselves from employment liabilities.
In theory, you can do the notarization online, but when I attempted to do it, the first notary did not even reply, and the second one told me: “The system is currently down. I would need to come to the office.”
In the US, you can just use Stripe Atlas or similar services, and get everything done for $500 in a nice digital interface within 2 or 3 days. But even if it took 2 weeks, it wouldn’t matter much because one doesn’t have to put time and energy into it whereas in Germany you have to contact people, coordinate, etc…
The friction that you seem to like has almost certainly cost Germany a good deal of jobs from people who decides that the hassle just wasn't worth it.
Each little step of friction discourages some entrepreneurs and adds barriers to entry for incumbents to prevent competition.
And just in general, not doing something very often is not a valid reason for making it needlessly expensive and time consuming.
It’s on law enforcement and regulators to counter fraudsters. Ordinary citizens should not bear pain because of them.
Anyone should be able to start a business, reasonably easily and cheaply – I feel it's a matter of basic freedom and liberty: you should be able to do what you bloody well want with your life, including starting a business. Basic protections to prevent the most egregious of abuse is fine, but mostly it's just about registration and paperwork.
Having to pay tens of thousands of euros for limited liability so you don't risk getting completely assraped if your business fails is how you keep the poor plebs in their place. All of this is classic "one set of rules for the poor, another set of rules for the rich" type of stuff.
On the other hand, an ordinary individual considering starting a new business, perhaps only a few times in their lifetime, may indeed be dissuaded from pursuing this venture.
This issue mirrors the inefficacy of anti-money laundering policies, which, while intended to curb criminal activities, have a negligible impact estimated at merely 0.1%; but the global cost of implementing these policies exceeds their benefits of two orders of magnitude (see DOI:10.1080/25741292.2020.1725366 for details).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1...
If you’re an entrepreneur AML will cause you nothing but harm while the rich avoid it through the caribbean, Luxembourg, Monaco, Switzerland, etc.
And you probably won't do it that fast anyway. But that figure demonstrates the small amount of red tape.
Starting this process should only require that they know their responsibilities, have identified themselves, and have fulfilled any obligations like payment. With government having our ID’s and login/sig/payment tech, each step should be done in seconds. Then, some fraud prevention spotting obvious issues might add a bit more time. It should still be quick.
Are you a German? :D :D
Here in the US (at least in entrepreneurial circles) it's common advice to wrap an LLC around anything that involves money. Hobby website starting to get some traffic? LLC. Selling earrings at the craft fair? LLC. I own a small building with my brother--you bet there's an LLC there. I started a $0 capital consulting company while a post-doc, just to try.
It's not a daily occurrence, but often enough that I don't want to waste time.
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/corporations-canada/en/serv...
For an extra $100, there’s a four hour express service.
Delaware courts are also efficient, which makes litigation less likely to turn into a multi-year and multi-million dollar affair.
In Sweden, you can get this done in a matter of days, where you sell the shares of your corporation for the net value minus a fee of about $1000.
The numbers I have seen for external costs range in the low thousands, but maybe that is wrong?
Time is money, and government isn’t supposed to get any discount coupon on it.
Yes, time spent is a problem, but then communicate it in form of TIME SPENT, not just inflate the costs into some arbitrary number so you can make it sound worse while whining. It's dishonest.
In Sweden, you can of course also choose to dissolve it yourself, but nobody does that since it takes years, and it's pretty cheap to let someone else take care of it for you.
It sounds like the same service is not available on the market in Germany?
It seems much more popular to sell it to be dissolved since there are some risks involved with someone else using it in the future.
So I can understand if it is not very popular in Germany either to sell a company to be re-used.
What surprises me is that it seems to be a good sized market in Germany for someone to provide a service where they buy your company and later dissolve it, but the service doesn't exist (?)
The formal process in Germany seems simple enough. Just sign a sales contract at a public notary, the buyer replaces the CEO, and you're done.
Since this doesn't really seem to exist (?), I assume the potential liabilities for the buyer are so great that the service price would be much too high?
If you pay them to dissolve the company for you, they buy the shares from you and replace the board and the CEO. At that point, you're completely free from the company.
They then must take the 7-9 months needed to go through the whole dissolution process. There is a mandatory 6 month wait after announcing the dissolution to give lenders/sellers time to make claims against the company. This wait is 12 months in Germany.
There is also paperwork for the accounting, tax filings, etc.
The service takes care of all this as the new owners. Since they have done this literally thousands of times, they don't need to spend many man-hours on it. Therefore, the fee is fairly low, about 1000 dollars, of which 300 dollars are mandatory government fees.
Example (Swedish): https://www.bolagspartner.se/avveckla-aktiebolag/
So if you own a company with 11 000 dollars in the bank and no debt, they will pay you 10 000 dollars for it.
You can do everything online, including signing the contract. No need to visit a public notary or similar.
It involves setting your balance sheets to 0 (careful here, if it goes under 0 you are bankrupt and have to file for insolvency), proof through your bookkeeping that the company has no assets and no debt, submitting to the court and wait a couple days until the court signed off on it. Then the corp is gone.
It seems it would be very hard to set the balance sheets to exactly 0? What about prepaid taxes etc?
Of course, the immigration question wouldn't matter for other immigration situations like holding German or EU citizenship, German permanent residence or EU long-term permanent residence, family reunification permits, or anyone who actually gets explicit approval to be self-employed. And the health insurance question wouldn't matter for people switching from employment (with public health insurance) to self-employment.
Practically though, the immigration office's bureaucrats are by definition as far removed from entrepreneurship as they can be, and might struggle to reconcile the documents you have with the list of documents they are told to ask for.
My impression is that working for a company one substantially owns or controls, regardless of where it is registered, can lead to them deciding that it's self-employment and disqualifying a third-country national from using that work as the basis for an EU Blue Card or GKV.
Also, the rules for obtaining an EU Blue Card (or a skilled worker permit) require the employer to have a place of business in Germany, and that might be hard to demonstrate when the only tie to Germany is the location of the applicant. No idea if just renting a German office address for the business would suffice. At least Americans, Canadians, and other §41 AufenthV Abs 1 nationalities can bypass this obstacle with the §26 BeschV permit instead, with some extra approval and priority check paperwork. But this doesn't help with the issues in the previous paragraph of potentially being viewed as self-employment for immigration and insurance purposes.
They're all committing tax fraud and thinking they're in the clear, only getting away with it due to lack of international cooperation. It will bite them in the ass sooner or later, the taxman always gets his cut. The only way to avoid it is to physically move out.
Sorry to be the one to break it to you but essentially they're all committing tax fraud.
https://blog.therealitaly.com/2015/04/16/fixing-italy-a-litt...
How many days of wages is 12,500 for the average worker? In the US, even for someone making minimum wage, you could pretty quickly cover the costs of forming an LLC, let alone someone making more.
That's the entire point. The concept that any idiot can start an LLC with no collateral (which the 25k are) is completely, absolutely, mind bogglingly bonkers to us Germans. Sounds like a scam imo.
no wonder you guys fell for Wirecard
good thing the EU/Eurozone/EFTA/EEA lets anyone do business with a business entity registered in any member state and accept SEPA in any regional currency
so some microstate with competitive laws and more egalitarian access can circumvent Germany’s exclusionary hurdles
But I'm glad Luxembourgh, Estonia and others do things that mirror new world novelties, while remaining easier to bank in the EU with than non-EU entities, and look familiar to EU residents.
It effectively puts the entire country into a position where unless a citizen is born relatively wealthy, they have to perform labour for someone else for several years while they save up enough to start their own business. Who does the system benefit? What is it preventing? Why has the sky not fallen in on the UK with a near identical economy, but near-zero cost ltd company startup fees?
With an LLC, the company is only liable with the capital that it has, and if it has none, then it can scam people with impunity (there can be criminal charges if there's outright fraud, but you won't win any money in a civil case against a company that scammed you, if the company has no money).
Yup that's pretty much the idea. If you think that's unfair, oh boy, wait until you hear about our infamous trade schools and apprenticeships.
Though you're right, incorporation doesn't shield from scammers. We as a nation fell for Wirecard after all.
Got any stories to tell? ;)
Sure the thread is about limited-liability, but parent argues as if non-wealthy people can't form businesses, which is not true.
It means that as soon as you screw something up or just get unlucky you might not only lose your business, but your personal savings, house etc.
Uhh, what? Have you never heard of UGs? That is, 1 Euro GmbHs.
Here is the law that regulates GmbHs, with the paragraph specific to UGs:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gmbhg/__5a.html
Where in the GmbH-law do you find anything to support your claim?
Though I have to admit this was 10 years ago when I looked into it. I remember there being a lot of fearmongering around starting an UG back then.
If a UG with 1 euro in share capital has a large equity, low expenses, and is run prudently, then I don't think the CEO/shareholders are personally liable if the UG is sued for a million euros and must pay that?
Both a GmbH and a UG have a "share capital" (Stammkapital). It is at least 25 000 euros for a GmbH, and 1 euro for a UG. On day 1, this is also the equity (Eigenkapital).
If the company makes profits, that will increase the equity. The equity makes it possible to keep spending money for a while even if the cash flow is negative. A 1 euro UG can in theory have 1 million euros in equity.
In both cases, the CEO is legally obligated to start insolvency proceedings immediately if it looks like the company can't pay its bills or loans any more. This is also required if the equity goes below half the share capital (same as in Sweden, "kontrollbalansräkning").
> if the initial Stammkapital for an UG is too low, it then is seen under constant thread of insolvency under the law
I don't think it's that simple? To begin with, it's the equity and the cash flow that matters, not just the Stammkapital (share capital) by itself. A UG can start out with a very low share capital, but if it has no expenses and a positive cash flow, then insolvency is not a risk, right?
If the cash flow suddenly becomes negative, for instance by losing a big client, or the main product suddenly can't be sold any more, then even a GmbH can be under immediate threat of insolvency. The 25 000 euro in share capital is nothing compared to salaries for a bunch of people, plus an office lease agreement that runs for another couple of years, etc.
So if you're operating a GmbH with employees and an office, then I'd say that it can be "seen under constant threat of insolvency" if it only has the share capital available as equity (or worse, just half of it), and the future income is very uncertain. So both a GmbH and a UG can put the CEO in jail if he plays it fast and loose.
I can definitely see how it is easier for a UG to get into insolvency territory, and above all, people running UGs aren't as familiar with the rules and pitfalls.
I could be wrong on some things? I'm interested to learn more in that case.
Funfact: you should always use the full title, Companyname UG (haftungsbeschränkt) on all communications and contracts. Emitting the 'haftungsbeschränkt' or shortening it 'haftungsb.' may make you as a CEO personally liable for damages occured.
Not to mention that the minimum capital requirement is unlikely to deter any determined scammer. All you're really doing is making life slightly difficult for scammers who can't scrape together €12.5k in capital, while simultaneously also making life hard for all the legitimate contractors and (would-be) entrepreneurs who can't scrape together that amount.
Regardless, most laws around incorporation in Germany are a deterrent to any founder, I agree, but I honestly think we don't want this as a society. German culture is about work, and working for _someone_, not starting your own business.
I agree it could, and should be easier, at the same time you won't change a system that evolved from medieval trade guilds.
I wonder how Germany will survive the 21st century, where a key part is to make/capture a market first by some innovation that comes out of some startup scene (Silicon Valley most prominently) and push out all the other players.
German's in tech spheres keep complaining that they are being "ripped of" by the Anglo-Saxon space, but it seems to me it's actually their own mentality that is holding them back.
And of course everyone knows the story about the mp3 format, apparently invented in Germany and monetized in the US
https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/what-is-a-ug-haftu...
In my case, I burned through about 2500 euro in the first year just on stuff like that for a holding company that holds shares in my actual company. It takes about 4-5 months to get most of that behind you. Yearly running cost are about 1000 euro (accounting, recurring fees, etc.).
It seems to be aimed either at well established business magnates who want to open yet another business (and 25k€ is nothing in that case) or small bakery-on-the-corner businesses who will go for GmbH anyways (and hence no reason to cough up 25k€).
There's no path that explicitly caters to the tech founder.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
On the other hand, if you are sure that you're building the next Facebook, getting the money for a GmbH together on day -1 should be no problem at all. It turns out that most companies don't make it that far, though...
This "slow grow" mindset is so typical German. No one know who the next Facebook/Meta will be - but I would guess for some VCs (not all though) it helps to show you're not some random sole trader
There is also no limit on how large a sole proprietorship can grow. While mostly held up as example for why one might not want to keep the company form a sole proprietorship forever, Schlecker scaled from a single shop to over 14000 stores near the end and a couple billion euro revenue per year.
And don't get me started on being a business owner and wanting to become a mother. A lot of women business owners abandon their companies to get hired as regular employees when they want to have children.
Pharmacies in Italy work much like notaries, although they obviously provide a much more useful service. My understanding is that in part of the US taxis work the same way, with limited # of "medallions" being treated as an investment.
In California (I think other states, but each state has it's own specific laws) the fees are fixed below a small set amount.
https://www.nationalnotary.org/knowledge-center/about-notari...
From 2000 to 2020 the number of notaries in Germany had almost halved. How is that normal for any country ? Unless they replaced notaries with automation which Germany didn’t .
https://www.juve.de/markt-und-management/notariate-immer-wen...
https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/dutch-covid-19-tempor...
New Zealand doesn't have notiaries or special insurance but you do need to use a lawyer to transfer ownership and I think it costs about NZD1500 each for vendor and buyer.
The concept of title insurance doesn't exist in Germany as the Notar eliminates the risk.
There's often lots of post hoc justifications in Germany for "why it is that way" (and has to be that way). But nobody ever seems to stop and think: ok but the rest of the world seems to get by OK without these reams and reams of bullshit?
The problem with Germany is not that it is stuck in the 20th century and completely backwards, but that nobody seems to care that it is. Worse, if anything there seems to be a degree of pride among Germans of the "process". As soon as you criticise some piece of particular bullshit German bureaucracy (as opposed to bureaucracy in general, which generally you're permitted to criticise) then they start circling the wagons (often pointing to other countries where the situation is supposedly the same or worse). So it is never going to change.
I am not sure there are "countless" scams in the UK, but yes, in 10 years of commercial operation did come across a few oddities. Example - a customer (UK Ltd) who declared bankruptcy owing us a money and then then next day founded a new Ltd company and tried to act like he didn't owe us the money because it was a new entity.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-packaged_insolvency
I have not come across this kind of thing in Germany.
Oh, it does exist :)
That is... how bankruptcy works? He literally didn't owe you money anymore. Obviously you shouldn't extend his new company credit, but extinguishing old debts is the exact purpose of bankruptcy.
Corporate insolvency requires an “insolvency practitioner” to be appointed by the directors; this is a regulated profession, and this ensures that the company is wound up according to the regulations and statutes.
You cannot just “declare bankruptcy” in the UK either.
You’re insinuating that due to the bureaucracy Germany is somehow better at this; it is not, it’s just more inefficient.
There's an old movie, The Edukators, where one of the protagonist is effectively broke and working a low wage job but has spent years already and has many years more left to pay off a debt she incurred by accidentally crashing into an expensive car without insurance.
This situation is basically impossible in the US where the term "uncollectible" is used to describe such debts.
Of course it would first be covered by mandatory insurance you have to have when driving a car (if you're not legally allowed to drive a car, well, you're on your own)
For a GmbH and other limited liability companiee there are minimum equity requirements instead.
For corporations there's an entire process but in simple terms the company is handed over to an externally appointed handler who tries to generate liquidity by selling off all assets and contacting all debtors and creditors. The company might recover through the process (e.g. by finding an investor) but legally the corporation is frozen and substituted by a separate corporation that only exists to resolve its bankruptcy. If the corporation no longer has any assets, it can also be fast-tracked for being dissolved.
Is the notary able to model creditworthiness (i.e. they’re acting as a rating agency), or do they just sniff out “undesirables” by some ad hoc, unregulated process involving their personal judgement, or is it something else entirely?
Depends. This can be illegal and he is personally liable for the amount. That being said, he might have done things by the book and his previous venture is bankrupted.
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/03/crisis-uk-c...
Next, you would expect that the notary would educate participants and act as a source of trust, an actor in your best interest, but that is not the case. Notaries can change contracts until the last minute, and unless agreed upon, the common 14-day withdrawal period for contracts does not apply to things like buying property. Furthermore, if you are inexperienced, you can easily fall into traps.
As a concrete example, when buying a part of a shared property, it is commonly believed that the "Hausordnung" (house rules) is the owners' agreement for house rules. However, that is not the case, as there can be more, and in our case, it forbade us to keep dogs. Now, you could argue that we should have made ourselves more familiar with the law, and I would agree that is true. However, it begs the question, why do we need a notary?
So what else is that "trading platform" then, if not a "third party"?
The way in which this problem is solved is by introducing a third party that is trusted by both, seller and buyer. There's nothing wrong with this principle. What's wrong specifically with regard to notarys as a third party in property sales in Germany is that the amount of work involved in being this third party does not really scale linearly with the value of the thing to be transferred, but the system by which the price of the notaries' work is determined assumes that a property transfer is twice as laborious (and thus must be twice as expensive) if the property is twice as expensive as some other property. Which is BS.
Oh, and please don't suggest to "simply put it on a blockchain". I don't have the time to explain for the millionth' time why that doesn't work with physical properties. I consider that to be common knowledge among HN users after about 10 years of having those discussions regularly.
Also, property ownership can get ridiculously complex really fast. If just one person owns something, that's simple. But in reality, quite often multiple persons own something together (sometimes some of these persons aren't even humans, but legal entities). In that case there are a gazillion different ways in which such shared ownership can be implemented, with far-reaching implications with regard to what will happen if people disagree, split up, modify or sell the property further down the road. You cannot simply model this complexity with an SQL database because it involves legal contracts that specify the details in which a properties' ownership is shared exactly. And the notary is actually responsible in such a case to write these contracts, ensure that every participant knows about their role and rights within these contracts and isn't shortchanged.
Link to an article about this case (in German language, unfortunately): https://www.t-online.de/region/berlin/news/id_91147122/berli...
The way I learnt it, until now, is the following:
the person you are contracting is there to perform a single specific task.
Applied to the specific context: "Notarvertrag", it means:
the notary is there to perform the notarisation (basically to read and write the contract), making legal whatever YOU are asking to do.
Any additional thing:
- you ask him/her
- you ask someone else beforehand (so yes, you need to pay an additional session for help)
And even then, you not always get what you wished for. And when s** happens, .... "that's life experience"....
(Title insurance is where you must buy insurance when buying a house to guard against the risk that the house may have unknown liabilities or owners)
It doesn't exist in Sweden either, because the ownership of houses is in a central register. You can't make a claim against a house if it is not registered.
Funnily enough, there's no such register for condos in Sweden. So you can end up with a nasty surprise if it turns out you bought a condo that there were unknown bank loans against. But it doesn't happen often enough that there is title insurance against it.
Was this in Sweden? In that case, I have heard of cases where a condo that someone bought had an unknown bank loan taken out against it.
The bank loan is still attached to the condo even if it changes owners. The bank can force you to sell the condo to pay the loan back to the bank.
You can then turn around and sue the previous owner who took out the loan. Good luck with that.
I don't think this happens very often and usually the condo association knows which loans are taken out against which condos.
I'm not sure what a condo is, but if it's a 'bostadsrätt' then you check with the 'bostadsrättsförening', they're responsible for keeping a register of 'pantsättningar'.
Signed, a citizen of an EU state where you can create a company by digitally signing one form and paying the equivalent of $300.
The issue on the French side is more that they put the exact same excruciating procedures they had in paper online and didn't simplify too much in the process.
You'd be surprised to hear that you can do that in Germany, too. Costs about 25€ (depends on the municipality) and takes about 30min.
The blog post was referring to a very specific form of incorporation. There's not just the ones mentioned in there.
I thought that's what the article is about. What's so specific about the form of incorporation they are talking about? A limited liability company is the most basic form of a corporation...
Sole proprietorship / self-employment can be started here for around 20 EUR too, but that's not a company. Or does Germany have some other forms of companies that I don't know?
There are 9 forms of companies in Germany, only two of which (GmbH and AG [stock corporation/PLC/...]) require fixed capital and a notary.
That was part of a push to introduce standardized EU-wide legal forms for other types of businesses as well, but the process stalled and never really went anywhere after that.
Some particular aspects of company law are partially harmonised at EU level, for example insolvency law. But that's mostly about ensuring that cross-border insolvencies don't become hopelessly complicated and bogged down through parallel proceedings.
The concept of declaring bankruptcy is well known in most western jurisdiction, as is the criminal practice of delaying bankruptcy. Believe it or not, in most of the developed world you can't just have a company go tits up and expect to go out of there scot-free.
> Durchgriffshaftung
I've never heard of this concept before, but from what I can gather it's a rarely applied legal practice that's defined by case law (case law is is pretty rare to encounter in Germany) and it essentially just sounds like what happens in the case of gross neglience / large scale fraud.
I'd assume so but probably most legal matters are settled outside of courts. Also looking at it the other way around, it would be pretty silly if creating a GmbH would create immunity. Indeed I doubt it's applied very often but when trying new territory regarding copyright, it's probably worth a consideration that one may still be personally liable.
That said, my point is just that UG/GmbH is overkill in many cases especially if the company isn't making any serious money. You can invent a name, go to the town hall, fill a form so you can do business with it and it's possible to legally receive payments. Founding a GbR is a quite informal thing
The English / common law term for this is "piercing the corporate veil".
Most of the described steps are also necessary for a Delaware incorporation, and I found the process of incorporating a nothingburger.
1) The choice between a limited liability construct or a pass-through construct exists everywhere. My advice was always: Separate the biz from you personally, always use the non-pass-through option unless you really know what you're doing. Complexity and pain of a GmbH is identical to Delaware corp.
2) picking a new name that isn't in any dictionary is generally good advice, no matter what your jurisdiction is. We originally incorporated as SABRE Security, then years late got into a trademark dispute and had to change names. The fact that the Handelsregister can reject particularly poor names shouldn't be an obstacle.
3) I find getting riled up about the share capital a bit weird. I have never seen anyone struggle with that.
4) we can debate the utility of the notary public system in Germany, but this is hardly an obstacle.
5) Setting up a bank account with a GmbH iG in Germany is easy and quick with any of your local savings banks. These are non-profit banks with the explicit charter to help local businesses. Not sure what the author did wrong.
6/7/8) yes you need to pay in the share capital and prove you've done so, and get the reply from the Handelsregister.
9ff) yes you need tax and VAT IDs. Yes you need someone to do your books and taxes. True in Delaware, true in Germany, true in Switzerland.
All in all, the article reads super-whiny. I mean the author even complains that the notary uses your passport to authenticate you (?!).
I have been through a German GmbH, a Swiss AG, and a Delaware C-Corp with VCs, and I can tell you: The bureaucracy is pretty similar. And you will need help with taxes, accounting, legal compliance etc. And yes, it'd be nicer if all of this was simpler, fewer middlemen and lawyers involved, etc. - but this article paints things that are the absolute basics in any of the big jurisdictions as nefarious obstacles.
Yes the process in Germany can be improved a lot. But a lot of it is similar or equivalent to process in other places
> I mean the author even complains that the notary uses your passport to authenticate you (?!).
Yeah I had skipped this when reading the article, sorry it really sounds like the author doesn't know much about the basics of gov processes
"Don’t forget your ID or passport because that’s their foolproof way of identifying you"
Yes, that's exactly what it is. Your passport is official ID
Notaries should not exist, and could be replaced by a simple website.
It's all incredibly tedious and slow, and there are lots of reoccurring work and fees. Closing a company takes 2-3 years too, even if there are no irregularities.
Soon you'll be able to use a credit card in most shops even!
Sorry to hear it's still the same.
We don't appreciate its meaning anymore, but cash is literally the only anonymous payment method you can have in this lifetime, and people in Germany tend NOT to trust any entity/company/government holding your data for no particular purpose.
The downside of this is the split brain problem that you have with distributed systems: a state knows something about you that another state maybe doesn't, which leads to "interesting" things like illegal people having multiple identities in several states, etc. Weird s**.
Being free to dodge the tax man is incredibly valuable for small business and individuals in Germany as a lot of wealth is built on tax fraud. That's the kind of privacy people mean.
The people who are very vocal about (data) privacy in Germany (which are quite some people, though not all) indeed typically try to avoid such services.
And there's a difference between being vocal and actually walking the walk and doing anything about it.
Germany has 80+ million people. Having nobody on Instagram/Tiktok would be unthinkable.
However, historically speaking, this hesitation to have privacy over "convenience" is implemented still everywhere.
You can't just minimize it with "people want to evade tax", although it's also true.
Exactly.
This is the eperience from two dicatorships on German soil in the 20th century of which one ended less than 35 years ago (many of its crimes still have not been prosecuted). There still exist lots of contemporary witnesses who can tell you what being potentially be surveilled means in the day-to-day life.
In comparison to the NSDAP and SED, I think calling the 15 years of CDU government under Helmut Kohl (which actually ended a bit over 25 years ago) a dictatorship is a bit too harsh... /s
I fixed my mistake. :-)
East Germany (ended in 1990), Third Reich (ended in 1945), German Monarchy (ended in 1918)
That's some level of f** up.
No wonder that cash is the only accepted payment method in a world that tries at all costs to sneak into your private stuff.
At the same time, they had an early form of mobile Internet since they year 2000 (when most of the West didn't have internet at all, let alone mobile internet): https://www.wired.com/2000/06/its-a-wireless-world-in-japan/
Japan is ranked 4th/20th vs Germany's 23th/35th for mobile/fixed internet speed, so much better overall (and anecdotal evidence is that internet in Germany's countryside is rock bottom).
So Japan rather seems to me to _want_ to do their own thing (at least when it comes to preference for cash, although I agree that still faxing things is strange), compared to Germany which _cannot_, for various reasons.
[0] https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.stuttgart-album-zu...
Not sure where you people live, but this myth has to stop, eventually. I can literally count on one hand the n. of shops NOT accepting cards - it's most of the times shops which, I guess, use cash to have flexibility in their accountings :)
But actually a lot don't, and when you try to pay, even contactless, with a non-Girocard, it won't work.
Visa and Mastercard don't magically let you on their network because you have a card machine.
The bigger mystery is why stores in some other countries are happy to have a payment method chosen by the customer eat into their profit.
In particular, I was staying in Nordhausen for work for a couple weeks. The hotel I stayed at tried to refuse to accept that I paid by card online in advance. Every small restaurant I went to refused to accept either a credit or debit card, and only a couple chain (read:overpriced) restaurants would accept Mastercard. When I tried to buy an Ethernet cable at a general store they refused to accept anything other than cash once they realized I was a foreigner.
Maybe it’s a myth in large population centres, but definitely not overall. I had roughly the same experience throughout most of Thuringia, with even gas stations in certain areas only accepting cash.
This is basically wrong. They moved the budgets to different departments, where it made more sense. And it actually does move on..slowly. It's basically a living example of too many technical debts and the pains of federalism gone wrong.
> Soon you'll be able to use a credit card in most shops even!
Real credit cards are very uncommon in Germany. Debit cards on the other hand are working well everywhere, even in small shops (since the pandemia to be fair).
Not yet. There still exist plenty of cash-only places. In my neighborhood (P-Berg, Berlin) both nearest restaurant and nearest coffee shop are cash-only.
It's our failed state, so what do you expect?
?
In practice, it is not possible because you need to register to a local tax office of the worker. Spanish employee -> need to register your company with the Spanish tax office.
Good luck unless you can afford expensive legal services that do this for you. Does not make a sense unless you are planning to hire in quantity (>20 workers).
The alternative is that every remote worker is a subcontractor and takes care of their own taxes.
In Germany the pension insurance (DRV) will come around after a few years and demand a six digit figure from both your company and the employee, plus interest. You can also end up with criminal charges filed against you.
From my point of view there are also not many fees and none of them are recurring. IIRC, you have to pay the notary, the registry and the tax office for services rendered. Once you are registered, there are other fees, e.g. IHK (trade association) membership or insurances, but that is not part of the registration, that is cost of doing business.
Liquidation on the other hand takes 12 month (a transitory period required by law) and a few weeks before and after the liquidation for notary appointments. That's it. All in all it took maybe 18 month from decision point to deletion from the registry and the main part of the extra 6 month was deliberation what needed to be done before the transition started.
The relevant keywords for research are "Vorratsgesellschaft" or "Mantelgesellschaft". The former are empty companies with no business activity, the latter are older companies with business history but inactive now. Mantelgesellschaften are nice because they bring a credit history along making stuff like leasing easier but cause a little bit more effort at time of purchase.
[1] https://vorratsgesellschaften.dnotv.de/
I moved to Germany about 10 years ago, and my wife and I bought a house here last year. I think the money went to the seller some time in October, but to this day, we're not just yet the official owner of the property because we're still stuck somewhere in the red tape. We're almost there though though (we hope), it's just that change of ownership of a house is a super complicated multi-step procedure here that must involve a notary! Good stuff. And mind you, I'm not talking about anything special about this purchase, just a young family buying a home from an ordinary person who moved away.
(We're hoping it's only a matter of weeks now, though, wish us luck!)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39786934#39788110
In the author's case, because he is using a holding company, his exit tax burden will be doubled!
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39790138
Sadly, you cannot just leave and think it would be automatically deferred. You must apply for the deferral before you leave and the local tax authorities can ask for a security in cash for the entire amount owed. It is absolutely kafkaesque.
As with many German corporate tax matters, if you think you are affected by this, you should really speak with a tax advisor who has strong experience working with people in your particular situation. You cannot just read the rules and figure it out.
The US has an exit tax if you renounce citizenship, and it's assessed on your entire net worth. If the article you linked is accurate, this german tax seems much more reasonable.
EDIT: actually, I reviewed, and I think it's broadly similar --- treat all assets as if sold at market value on the date of exit. Thus, any deferred taxes from unrealized capital gains need to be paid when you exit the taxing jurisdiction. Although, again, if the linked article is correct, it only happens to assets where you own >= 1% of the company when exiting Germany, and all capital assets if you qualify in the US.
[1] https://www.winheller.com/en/tax-law-tax-advisory/internatio...
A tax on simply exiting the country is a very foreign concept to Americans I would assume.
Looks like the limit last year was $120k. Only 17% of Americans make more than $100k/year. Only ~5million Americans living abroad, or 1.5% of the population.
I'm sure those numbers are correlated, but I'll bet its under a few hundred thousand of people who are burdened with the tax. Even then, the benefits also are pretty nice.
Try owning a stake in a foreign company (CFC) though, that's a nightmare with often unavoidable significant taxes.
Also more and more non-US banks won't take US citizens as customers because they don't want to deal with the US's FATCA requirements.
No other developed country has these sorts of requirements for non-resident citizens.
But not allowed!
"If the Department of Homeland Security determines that the renunciation is motivated by tax avoidance purposes, the individual will be found inadmissible to the United States under Section 212(a)(10)(E) of the Immigration and Nationality Act"
https://winheller.com/blog/en/no-more-immediate-german-exit-...
(What I find concerning is the attitude of the German tax authorities in their continual attempts to strengthen and increase the scope of this law. They are always trying to broaden it leaving it to individuals and the courts to push back on them.)
Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wegzugsbesteuerung#Derzeitige_...
Just last week, I was telling people that the best way to get married in Germany is to get married in Denmark.
I cannot overstate how terrible German bureaucracy is, and how defeating it is to deal with it. A lot of people give up and leave the country over it.
[0] https://allaboutberlin.com
If you've experienced anything like a modern bureaucracy, Germany is infuriatingly backwards. The article is painfully accurate down to the minute detail.
Germany is not at the cutting edge, but it is far from the worse. The interactions I have had with bureaucratic systems in Thüringen have all been entirely fine. Friendly people, clear process, done quickly. Obviously that is only an n=1. It is a rural area that is not overloaded as Berlin is.
Which country would you consider "modern"? My experiences:
In the UK the way you prove who you are is literally a physical copy of your water bill.
Spain, some things work well enough, others are insane.
US, massive variability from state to state and government department.
- The requirements are arbitrary, undocumented, and largely depend on how the case worker feels on a given day. Common wisdom is to bring far more documents than asked for, just in case.
- Everything is paper-based. You are expected to act as a transport layer between offices that won't talk to each other. Everything is mailed, because digital communications are distrusted and digitalisation lagging far behind.
- Everything takes far longer than it should, partly due to the above, and due to chronic understaffing of government offices.
This is a problem in all major cities, and many of the smaller ones. In this case, n is a pretty big number backed by the many relocation consultants I work with. You got lucky, and I envy you.
My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is perfect. All the people chiming in about the US being so easy, yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about healthcare and how your health insurance is tied to your employer. Everyone who is extolling how simple the UK is, that's lovely. What a shame about brexit though.
The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.
The thing with bureaucracy is that it's part of normal life, there's no way around it. You can assume there's a 20% chance you'd get laid off in the US and that it would be bad, but there's a 100% chance you'll have to get a work or residence permit or something else in Germany, and it seems that the default is a painful process (reading the comments here).
> The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.
There are still places such as Switzerland where things are better though.
You can try to argue that the fine is a mandate, but many people found that it was much cheaper to just pay the fine than to buy insurance coverage. Of course, this means they have no health insurance coverage which obviously has big risks, but for many people, the only insurance plans they had access to were literally unaffordable (i.e., higher than their rent, so it was a choice between having a place to live, or having health insurance with a high deductible and copays).
I've never founded a company in Switzerland but it didn't seem that hard, talking with people who did. As an individual most of the things I've had to do (residence permit, taxes...) are also quite straightforward.
Individual interactions with the government are also frustratingly bureaucratic. The prevalence of fetch quests is a lowlight. Different departments don't talk to each other, maybe they think email is insecure or something, or maybe because every interaction with the government comes with a 30-90CHF+ fee. So I often find myself manually schlepping rubber-stamped documents from one part of the canton to another and paying for the privilege, something that is much better done by computers. A whole set of processes work like this and must be wide open to fraud.
Sometimes departments even expect you to send memos around to themselves. An example of one recent interaction that typifies the whole experience (loosely translated to English):
Clerk: You're late, you will have to pay a 50 CHF fine.
Me: <checks watch> I'm right on time and have been waiting to be called forward for 15 minutes.
Clerk: You were supposed to come within two weeks of the invitation, which was sent 3.5 weeks ago.
Me: I booked this appointment on the same day I received the invitation, which was also the same day it was sent. And today was the first available appointment slot.
Clerk: It says here on your invitation <gestures to fine print> that if you can't come within two weeks, you have to write us a letter to tell us why not.
Me: Ahhmmm.... to double check I'm not misunderstanding this, you expected me to write you a letter informing you your own calendar is full, a fact you already knew? And now you're fining me for not doing that?
Clerk: Yes. Will that be card or cash?
My wife went through something very similar in the last couple of years where her permit expired during COVID because she couldn't get the bureaucracy to pay any attention. She filled out the forms on time, was told to wait. She phoned them, was told her case was in progress, COVID delays etc and she should wait. Eventually she told me about this, we went to the office in person and was informed there was no record of any such interactions and she wasn't even in the system at all. Clerk acted like this was clearly our fault. I told the clerk to please make a record of the fact we'd been there and tried to resolve the situation in person, "I don't have permission to make notes on her file". OK, maybe that's why there are no records of previous interactions then? "Can't say". After that I decided that from now on every interaction is via registered mail. Make them think we're collecting evidence for a legal dispute. Things were suddenly resolved.
I'd love to say the above were unusual but it's really not. Every interaction with the Swiss government I've had tends to be like this if it isn't already digitized: it will be slow, it will be expensive, and it will contain at least one infuriatingly unreasonable gotcha that makes it even slower and more expensive. If a process is digitized on the other hand then it's going to be much better, Switzerland seems to have pretty competent government IT overall (when it exists).
Worse still, if a german says fuck it and wants to run his business in Estonia, the org still has to pay taxes in germany
The only silver lining to all this are Spaniards, Greeks, etc say the system here is better than in their country, but I think you should strive to benchmark up and not down
Why? Doesn't Germany have treaties with Estonia to avoid double taxation?
Outside Europe: Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore is better than Germany.
What wasn't fair before and what makes it more fair now for non-EU people?
Perfect is the enemy of good.
In Finland I can't remember the last time I filled a paper form for anything. And I've gotten new debit and credit cards, opened bank and stock holding accounts for me and my family, renewed _very_ expired passports, applied for multiple loans (200k€+), started a company and worked with medical services (recipes, doctor appointments)
The only things that required physical presence were getting my kid's first debit card and fetching the passports, everything else was fully digital and remote.
Everything is digital/easy here and has been it for a long time. Old people can still get a waiver to get government snailmail instead of secure digital mail though.
A part of the argument for Brexit was to enable simplifications of bureaucracy (obviously not for the specific case of someone in the EU migrating there, but for everything else). So that's not necessarily a great argument.
It hasn't been capitalized on to any great extent yet because the current government is weak and spent most of the time distracted by COVID. But the potential for simplification is actually there now, whereas previously it was often blocked by EU law.
This opportunity was sadly squandered due to populism (and Steve Bannon's Cambridge Analytica financed by Rob Mercer), with the result that now tons of migration from India and other Asian places is arranged to fill the gaps that the European workers that left created.
So let's see how life will be at the front doorstop of the EU of which it isn't a member anymore, say, in 10 year's time, compared to how it was 2016. From what my journalist friends are telling me, for once food theft has skyrocketed, because many cannot pay their grocery bills.
Informal/reasonable interpretations of EU law don't work. To even bring that up as an idea shows the culture gap that drove the UK out. The culture in Britain is incompatible with that. What happens is activists go to the ECJ and get a ruling that's unreasonable but formal, which the UK civil service (which likes clear rules) then goes ahead and implements strictly whilst other countries with different cultures would just ignore the rules. This process was called "gold plating". The result was the UK would end up with the worst possible outcome: a reputation for fighting against bad rules and being generally disagreeable/uncooperative, but then actually enforcing those rules when they pass anyway. The approach used by many other EU countries was to all agree on how wonderful the new rules were and then widely flout them, hence why obscure topics like fishing took on surprising prominence in the Brexit debates, the flouting of those rules was a long term and neuralgic issue that typified the problem.
Ten years from 2016 is only two years from now. There won't be any big changes in two years. The UK economy has closely tracked the rest of Europe and isn't doing any worse post-Brexit than other countries, or even sometimes slightly better (nothing to write home about compared to the USA of course, though how much that's due to US deficit spending is open to question).
> From what my journalist friends are telling me
Journalists?! They are widely distrusted for good reasons! You certainly shouldn't be learning anything about Brexit from them, they will happily say all kinds of nonsense that isn't true to try and defend the EU.
Years of derision of Greece and its processes and bureaucracy, vindicated... by having the same problems!
My favorite Berlin anecdote is when my wife (then girlfriend) and I first arrived in Germany, she was unemployed for the better part of a year as no-one would give her a chance. She actually got quite depressed about it, and reached out about state sponsored integration courses as the language lessons she was taking were expensive and she wanted to do something more holistic. The authorities told her in no uncertain terms that they didn't care and that there were no places available.
My biggest bugbear with Germany is that the state intrudes extensively in your affairs, most of the time they are being benevolent but that intrusion brings in a tremendous amount a bureaucratic baggage. And that baggage is slow, paper based, and becomes a significant barrier for doing anything. In many countries the kind of paperwork you have to slave over here just doesn't exist in the first place.
FWIW my wife and I got married in Denmark. It was impossible for my wife to provide an up-to-date (less than six months old) translated copy of her Chinese birth certificate. Theoretically she could have traveled back to china (in the middle of the pandemic) and begged her backwaters local police authority to print a new copy but they weren't obliged to issue her one. Denmark was happy with her passport and some declarations from the local authorities in Germany.
Some days I really wonder why I continue to put up with the hassle, probably just sunk cost at this point and stubbornness. Wouldn't recommend Germany for anyone with a low frustration tolerance.
I'm sure the local governments know it's a good source of tourist money though, hotels, restaurants and so on.
Honestly, as a native German this anecdote rather sounds like your girlfriend saw the good side of the German bureacracy (and life) (you likely haven't seen the bad side ... ;-) ): the girlfriend asked for something and got a direct honest answer. This is German directness, which I would rather consider a German virtue, but often confuses people from other countries where answers tend to be more sugar-coated.
In rest of the world, the behavior of being "direct" only when there's no negative consequence is just called being a jerk.
No the point is my wife was struggling, and she asked for help integrating, and the state refused to help her integrate. Even as a hardcore capitalist you should be in favor of getting immigrants into the labor market ASAP.
The irony is that fifteen years ago when she was a new immigrant to Australia, the state sponsored TAFE system was amazing for her, taught her English, and totally turned her life around.
I find this hilarious. It's the same in France, you need an up to date "original" of your birth certificate. But why? It's just saying you (full names) were born in XXX on a specific date. There's nothing about it that could change, really. In the country I'm from, your parents get one original on birth, and you can ask for copies from the town hall. But in France multiple administrations were extremely bothered that they weren't "original" (because they say DUPLICATA on them, and in French you get a shitty A4 with a stamped signature one can print at home, but they insist on an original) and weren't in French.
As a new world Australian, the fact this remains in force is completely insane. In Australia the authorities can trivially query the birth and deaths register to verify the validity of certificates.
In Germanys defense, centralized registries were used by the Nazi regime to facilitate the Holocaust.
Anyway Biometric passports/ids pretty much completely supersede this use-case and can be as equally decentralized.
Those are already in place in France, but some administrations still ask for a paper original (or scan of original) of your birth certificate. However some others have implemented some government-backed scheme where it automatically fetches your birth records from a government source (idk how it works behind the scenes) and it just works.
It was the same with a proof of where you live, it had to a be a bill in your name for electricity or something similar, but now it can just query popular sources such as the main electricity provider and just work.
If I told you the only way to deal with the Canadian government is bribes, would you believe me? Then why do you believe it when talking about equally advanced countries?
Japanese bureaucracy has a bad rap, but it isn't that bad. There's still paperwork (not much has moved online) but the public servant staff are super helpful and guide you through things and are helpful when there is some blocker. Especially in the past 3-5 years there have big improvements with a lot of paperwork and stuff that required your personal seal has been removed, and the MyNumber card makes doing anything online very easy. I've never ever had to fax anything as people joke about (and a friend in Germany actually had to do)
In my experience, ZA bureaucracy is simpler than e.g. Germany or Greece, but general operational incompetence and corruption makes it just as slow. It's a tradeoff of more easily understanding what you have to do, but you'll have to sit in a queue for 6 hours and hope they don't tell you "the system is offline".
The closest thing to legal bribery is to go through specialist firms that deal with the bureaucracy for you, for a fee. This is also much faster as they know who's who within each department to get things done faster.
I've had friends request old documents only to learn 8 months later that the archival facility burnt down a few years ago so they don't know what documents they do or don't have. Ask a firm to do it, pay a couple thousand Rand, and they'll get it done within 3 weeks.
Since then Germany is trending down and Eastern Europe is trending up - and bureaucracy along with it. Digitization, customer friendliness, you name.
Even some random office in Serbia seems more pleasant than dealing with Germany.
Germany is trending towards becoming a has-been, like the UK (with the difference that in the current geopolitical context it's even proving to be an obstacle).
Every single one of those things is better in my new European home.
- CDU, which is politically the closest to the Republicans, is by far the strongest party now
- AFD, actual Neo-Nazis, are the second strongest party in recent polls
- East Germany is basically a giant No-Go area for PoC, with a couple of exceptions.
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
- The US Republican Party is far right and going farther. The Democratic party is also on the right. There are basically zero federal politicians on the left, the best you can get is basically center.
- We had an attack on our federal capitol building three years ago by white supremacists. Nazis carrying flags with the hakenkreuz marched on the Tennessee state capitol about six weeks ago. The number of groups like this is rising swiftly, even the police are in on it.
- We have done very little to stop this, we even had our previous president praising them. It's an embarrassment to our country, honestly. We were so proud to have beaten the Axis powers in WWII - and now we're going down the same path.
Having British roots attracts pressure from the locals. Ironically enough, given the countries' origin.
I live in the EU and I used to live in USA for a while so I am always looking for similar experiences and comparisons.
Thanks again!
For me (and I didn't fully appreciate this until I moved here) there is an incredible amount of mental overhead in the US.
Questions you don't have to ask yourself in Germany:
- What happens if I get very sick? Do I have enough savings for cancer?
- What happens if I lose my job? Do I have enough savings to get by if my job fires me?
- What happens if something happens to ny car? How will I get to work? How will I get my groceries?
- What happens if someone has a gun in this crowd? How will I get out? How can I protect people? Is that sound just a car backfiring or is that a gunshot?
- Am I saving enough for retirement? How will I get healthcare when I'm old? How do stocks in my retirement account work? Is this person trying to help me retire or trying to make money off of me?
Naturally most of these problems can be resolved with enough money.And you can have a comfortable life in the USA with enough money. And if we're being honest there are European counties that struggle with similar but maybe not all at once.
There are many things I miss about the US, and maybe someday I'll return. But there is much less financial/life planning related stress for me here
- If I call the police, will they help? Will they help me? Many people I know are SCARED by the police when they're just minding their business, which I'd say indicates something wrong. We nearly had a civil war in 2020 over police killings. - Very little walking or biking infrastructure. Very long distances between commercial and residential areas too. Even trying to be environmentally friendly feels pointless sometimes when you have to drive 10 or 20 minutes just to go to a recycling center. - Workers' rights are a joke in the US. OSHA regulations are only followed after someone gets a bad enough injury. Good luck getting any compensation for that too, the phrase "worker's comp" is a joke all by itself. - The cost of secondary education is ridiculous. I have loans from college, as do most of my friends, and we've been paying those of and will be paying for years to come.
You're very much correct that some or all of these can be resolved with enough money. But even for someone with the cash and connections to make such a drastic and expensive move, it's a lot. I'm sure as time goes on I will find more examples.
As I said, I was hoping for more personal experiences like "this happened to me so I decided to leave" than just perceptions and perceived fears which can be too easily influenced or biased. I can understand how they add up and create stress but so does flying for a lot of people - while being one of the safest modes of transportation.
For example, going to the US, my main fear was violence, and more specific gun violence and terrorism. Luckily I never encountered either, even if there were quite a few shootings and even 9/11! during my very stay. Today I'd just say these are statistically insignificant events (as horrifying as they are).
Secondly I was terrified of losing my job - with everything it entailed, especially my work visa. And I did get fired, eventually. Luckily the whole thing went swimmingly, with COBRA & severance pay picking up the slack during a short search and my next company continuing my visa sponsorship.
I was also afraid of cops (thanks, Hollywood!) but all encounters I actually had (noise complaints during parties and traffic stops) were quite amusing & polite.
In the end I had an amazing, positive experience living in the USA and it also helped me appreciate and understand Europe better. After all the years living in the EU now I could write a whole lot more about the horrors here (corruption, bureaucracy and the Russian threat easily come to mind) but that's not the topic and I am too old to believe there is a perfect place for everybody. Each choice is personal and it's composed from countless subjective, even subconscious factors - so good luck with yours!
Then again, anything like this is a stereotype.
Germans are (rather) efficient. The German bureacracy isn't. :-)
EDIT: But to give more evidence for my claim: violent attacks against government clerks are more and more increasing. I will just post two articles (in German), but it is easy to find many such articles:
> https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/attacken-auf-amtstrae...
> https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/heilbronn/a...
I know this sound stupid, but here's the reality: for the most part, those regulations aren't in place because people love bureacracy. They are there to enforce laws and implement measures that the people demand. They don't directly demand them, but whenever the government announces anything, people complain. They either complain that somebody is getting something they feel like they don't deserve, or they complain that they aren't getting something.
And because Germans love Bürgerbegehren and suing almost as much as they love complaining, everything has to be checked three times before anybody gets anything.
They're eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems.
Having dealt with Germany I have come to realize that excessive bureaucracy is basically a jobs program and a way for people to cover their ass whenever the shit hits the fan.
Something goes wrong and you're the big boss? Add more bureaucracy as your attempt to "fix" the problem and your justification to why your job is valuable to the company.
Something goes wrong on your watch? It's not your fault if you followed all the bureaucracy conjure by your bosses.
Never ever confuse Germans with the German government (except if you are looking for trouble :-) ). It is well-known that what are "lawyer jokes" in the USA are "politicians jokes" in Germany.
1. German companies are equally as bureaucratic because the people and society in general are culturally so into it.
2. German government is formed by German people voted by other German people, they aren't ruled by some aliens that came from of the sky, therefore are representative for them.
Fear of the boss to be caught with a error on his (hence he adds more bureaucracy), fear of the general public to look racist (hence low policing in high crime area with many foreigners), fear of the case worker to get sued (hence applying the rules literally, to the detriment of the applicant),.etc
This literally applies to big orgs as well with red tape, etc
France also seemed further along digitizing things.
Total duration is probably still a tie: it's all over the map but things can take ages in either country.
The Netherlands is great, except when it isn't. If you ever get stuck there, you have no chance convincing anyone. Their believe they have the best (civil) service doesn't help, but it turns out its all highly optimized for 'normal' Dutch citizens. As soon as your deviations from that norm start to add up, you're going to run into unhandled edge cases, which people won't handle (no protocol, and they are not used to using their own brain). "Computer says no" is Dutch (civil) service in a nutshell.
I remember not being able to create an account because the website password validation regex was buggy, I wrote an email about it and it's probably still not fixed. I've had to read the "compiled" js of the website to understand what was wrong to begin with.
I've had administrative processes slightly deviate from the happy path and getting stuck. When you talk to a human now. it's sorry can't do anything it's all online even when you explain that yes you tried other possible contact channels phone,email,in person, etc (email seems to go to /dev/null or get a canned response that clearly didn't read your message).
"Computer says no" is more and more of a thing now here in france. it's faster when you on the common happy path but if you aren't you better pray. Also the different services still seem unable to talk to each other even when they are in the same building / same administration but different department. Hopefully they'll improve that in 20 years.
Highly optimized for the happy path, which of course does cover 99% of cases, but you better not be in the 1% :) That's what I liked about France: nobody expects you to be normal, so everybody is used to working around systems. For the Dutch (and Germans), systems are sacred, and if they don't work, it must be you!
Edit:spelling and clarification on intake
Also if I remember at Tergooi MC you needed to register in their system anyways before an appointment. In the past they issued a little plastic card at the very same booth.
Inside the hospital itself you should be fine with an EU ID card or a passport, I don't think they specifically need a Dutch ID.
The Administration is particularly bad. Most of the time, they're understaffed and digital infrastructure is completely lacking most of the places. Then, in many cases, there is also a ping-pong in terms of responsibilities. Sometimes your stuff is bouncing between different levels of administration (thank you federalism) and sometimes its between different departments. Its not unheard of that you have to provide the same data in different forms for the different departments working for the same agency.
The amount of time I have spend waiting in line to do something as simple as renewing my Perso (national ID) or requesting a passport. When I moved two years ago, I spent 4 hours waiting in line to sign a form stating that I moved here. Waiting for the passport was a similar waiting game (and that is as a German-born citizen, I can't begin to imagine how bad it is when you're also concerned with residency and visa stuff).
German companies love to complain about the bureaucracy of the government, but are effectively replicating that same bureaucracy without any need.
So no, most interactions aren't efficient unfortunately
But all of this is just child play compared to how easy things are in China in terms of settle down (based on the experience of someone who has a job with a local company). I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways".
_I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways"._
Did you live in China as an immigrant, did you settle down there for several years, did you have to go through their immigration process ?
But you go ahead, state that the way other countries are doing things are irrelevant because of almighty statistics etc. (in absolute numbers, 0.07% of immigrants in China represents more people than the population of either France or Germany). You are not the first one stating this and it just feeds my narrative of people located in EU countries that are convinced that they have nothing to learn from anything that comes over the Atlantic, the Ural or the Mediterranean Sea, so nothing will ever improve nor be challenged.
Now even if I was completely wrong about this assessment (which I'm sure you think I am), it wouldn't make sense to presume that anyone would just take your word for it and allow themselves to be called pretentious when they disagree with you. That rude behavior is not increasing your credibility.
I sincerely hope that you'll get the opportunity to experiment with the immigration process in China which is straightforward and hope that people may overcome the initial reluctance to draw some of the lessons from a country that is far away and has a questionable political system. I am not saying that it is perfect, I am just stating that we have things to learn from it and that I believe it is sad to just overturn anything that comes from countries that are different.
I believe we can end this thread here as it seems that we will definitely not agree, but that's OK. Have a good day and sorry if my behavior appeared as rude to you.
My application went into a blackhole for more than 4 months, while my existing permit expired, essentially making me a prisoner here (I can stay and work in Germany but if I travel internationally, I won't be allowed entry back).
Meanwhile, my applications for a temporary travel permit were unanswered for months. There is no way to contact the foreign office (no email, no telephone, no fax). You just send your application and pray.
I strongly advise anyone to stay away from Germany if you have better options. This country is a bureaucratic nightmare in general.
Mind you, I applied in December. I will not be able to travel out of the country for most of the summer as I wouldn't be allowed to reenter.
They refused multiple times to issue the temporary permit that I'm legally entitled to. I'm having a lawyer ask again, this time with the threat of a lawsuit.
It's such a common problem that I had to write a detailed article about it. People miss weddings and funerals because the immigration office is months late. The number of lawsuits due to inaction is growing exponentially since 2019.
In my case, I was told I was not eligible for the visa I needed but when I spoke to a migration consultant who knew the process, they managed to get it done. I was pretty shocked as this wink, wink, nod, nod style system is not something I expected from this country.
I was told more than once by very knowledgeable people that if you anger a case worker, they can and will make your life hard by nitpicking every little detail and asking for as many documents as they can.
This happens for example if you get angry at their incompetence, or if you sue them for inaction (although in Berlin they see it as normal business by now).
corruption is spreading like a plague with no consequence in sight for anyone involved.
Wikipedia documents that well enough.
It varies form city to city, I live in one that I'd say is an exception on the positive side: Most clerks in the various offices are actually helpful and even giving you hints. I had to renew my passport in January and got an appointment the next day. I got the appointment online(!) in Germany(!!). Passport could be collected 4 weeks later. Meanwhile an ex-colleague who lives in Berlin had to wrestle with his nearest office to even get an appointment for a passport renewal, then gave up and made an appointment with the office in the neighboring district, where it was still a 4 weeks wait. He told me there are districts where it takes up to 6 months.
I guess if you want pain and suffering, move to Berlin. :o)
It's been an absolute mess trying to secure my wife's settlement permit ("Niederlassungserlaubnis"). She has a german Master's degree, works in a government-funded research facility, and has been in the system since December 2022. We've now been ghosted for 14 months, only to be told to make an appointment to provide additional documents (which were not on the 'required documents' list they initially handed to us). After checking the appointment booking website to no avail, I came up with a python script that sends a notification to our phones when a new appointment pops up. It took 40 days of scraping until a new free appointment was available, only to be allowed to provide paper documents in person.
Adding to that, every six months, her employer threatens to fire her if she can't prove her legal status in Germany. So she's constantly jumping through hoops to get this temporary paper permit called "Fiktionsbescheinigung" just to keep her job. It's a hassle, costs €13 each time, and involves cycling through multiple unhelpful bureaucrats at the Ausländerbehörde's hotline (they do not answer emails) until finding one that very reluctantly produces this document.
All of this is beyond frustrating.
[1] https://www.merkur.de/deutschland/muenchen-kvr-auslaenderbeh... [2] https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/stuttgart/a...
In comparison I also had to renew my Japanese foreign card and later my ID card, and both procedures were a royal PITA, and in both cases I had to wait a month to get the new card.
Lawyers making mistakes, civil cervants making mistakes, making mistakes themselves. Big mess. They are actually breaking EU law while doing these things.
"Those are random spot checks"
So there are random spot checks where people will check passports. So "nobody will check passports" is false.
But otherwise: keep in mind that the freedom of movement is reserved to EU citizens (and their families): if you had to get a residence permit (and thus you're a non-EU national), you don't have the same rights.
Even without temporary (Covid, terrorism, etc.) internal checks, you can be stopped by police (national laws will differ) and be asked to show proof of id, and proof of your right to stay.
The fact that you have a pending residence application in progress will usually give the right to stay in the country that you applied in, but that proof might be as flimsy as as a stamped slip of paper (not even a A4 paper with a letterhead) and/or an email in the local language. Don't expect German police to be able to read and accept your Italian piece of paper, or viceversa Italian police to read and accept your piece of paper in German.
In fact, the same applies for non-EU family of EU citizens: the residence permits will be denied only in extreme cases (e.g. terrorism)... if you're just a non-EU citizen, there are even more situations in which that would apply. Imagine that the country that you applied in might refuse your residence permit: you'd then have to leave the country and Schengen (or file some kind of appeal), and that would make it even clearer that you wouldn't have right to stay in another Schengen country.
So, you might not have right to stay (in another Schengen country), and even if you might have it, proving your right might not be easy.
About the
> Please add a link
The original request could've made sense (you could have for example linked to directive 2004/38/EC , but that doesn't apply to people who aren't EU citizens or family of EU citizens)... but note that in this case we're trying to prove a negative (the laws will usually describe which rights you have, but not in which case you don't have such a right... you might find a guidance or case law document, but those are scarcer)
Again: the whole situation is really unfortunate, because the laws are also written with the expectation that you won't have to wait long after applying for the necessary documents. And even when the laws are clear about the timelines, the bureaucracy will try to weasel themselves out of it, for example Article 10 of the aforementioned directive states:
> The right of residence of family members of a Union citizen who are not nationals of a Member State shall be evidenced by the issuing of a document called "Residence card of a family member of a Union citizen" no later than six months from the date on which they submit the application. A certificate of application for the residence card shall be issued immediately
Of course, when we had to deal with it, the bureaucracy just asserted that until you show up for the appointment (which you had to wait more than 3 months for, since you originally applied), you haven't actually "submitted your application", yet.
As an EU citizen, realizing first-hand how slow, uncertain, and oppressive our immigration system is, really left a bad taste in my mouth... If you're not a citizen of the EU or an “Annex II” country, I wish you good luck when applying for a Schengen visa, but in case that you might get rejected: don't sweat it, and just consider other destinations, if you're planning a vacation... there are a bunch more places with friendlier visa policies (e.g. Turkiye, Cape Verde, Morocco, UAE, etc.)
Practically, not anymore: there are block posts on main roads into Germany and they check passports.
Also did you forget flying?
I look like a typical WASP programmer in his forties, so no selection bias or something.
See also this marvel of brain damaged legalese: https://www.strazgraniczna.pl/pl/cudzoziemcy/najczesciej-zad...
The incompetence is not confined to immigration, it's pretty much everywhere. Same goes for France actually.
It's scary because the party that complains the most about it is gaining traction, and it convinces centrist parties to change their stance on immigration. It's not a pearl-clutching minority anymore, but a politically advantageous position.
As an immigrant, I feel like we're about to live a variation of the Niemöller poem. "First they came for the asylum seekers..."
If you are not doing any of that is that really that surprising that people are getting fed up with it?
I'd like to see white, christians or atheists, germans move to some of the countries those asylum seekers are coming from and see how they'd be treated.
Then we can discuss if it's the same in every country.
But as a white guy from middle American (in that I lived there for 40 years) who has voted Republican and Democrat and has enough conservative ideas that people are often confused about my political leanings, I can tell you there is some truth to this.
I’ve been in the room more than several hundred times when people who were working in the American bureaucracy openly "decried the horrors of the Mexican invasion ". I will admit the majority of that was my ex’s father but it wasn’t only him. I’m certain he did not make things easier on his Mexican applicants (dmv in his case).
I’ve also heard racial slurs used hundreds of thousands of times, very few people engaging in this voted democrat.
I’m sure there are endless stupid conspiracy theories in progressive echo chambers, I hear them from time to time they are just as silly as republican ones and I would love nothing more the above comment to be correct.
In the end, their experience definitely does not match up with mine and we should all be sad.
For instance, if Republicans are really so hateful of certain minorities, why do they not properly go after things like H1B mills (which benefits minorities more than the rich white people that they supposedly want to limit immigration to)? or take effective action to seal off the borders and make immigration policy stricter? As an immigrant myself, I'd take even that over the current hellish system where you spend a decent chunk of your life in limbo, unable to fully settle down because of the uncertainty, since at least then there would be the finality of immediately knowing the doors are closed. The only way the current system is bearable is if you approach it with total apathy, where you avoid getting too attached and just convince yourself that you can also make it in any other country.
Rather than negotiate measures to fix the immigration system (in either direction), both sides would prefer to keep expanding the class of people who are one technicality away from being kicked out, for Republicans it gives them the ability to promise stronger borders every election year, and for Democrats it gives the ability to promise aid to specifically illegal immigrants and of course once elected they can just say that the last guy left a mess and they had their hands full fixing just that or any version of "the other side isn't cooperating/compromising".
A particularly glaring example of this being their inability to agree on a stronger path to permanent residency for PhD holders. Considering that PhDs are generally funded by grants, not offering very easy immigration for PhD holders amounts to training foreigners at your own expense and sending them back to compete with you. PhD holders typically fit the "we only want the best of the best" position of the Republicans (even if we accept the conspiracy that they actually hate all minorities, it'd be a convenient way to 'wash' that image, without having to accept all that many minorities), and for Democrats it would be a very easy "look, we're slowly working to fix immigration" action.
Add to that the fact that the Republicans now have a second reason not to fix immigration: they can’t run on it if it’s not broken.
If Trump gets in again he will do a lot of anti immigration theater for his base but nothing will really change. Democrats won’t fix it either. Someone has to pick berries and trim hedges.
People come up with this from time to time but the logical conclusion is small governments. It has been a few centuries now and there hasn't been any progress in improving the quality of the politicians; it isn't going to change. Every single government, literally, has people in it who would be morally comfortable in a Nazi-style dictatorship. Any plan that involves empowering these people is stupid.
If your first reaction to this is “well you don’t need anything!” you must be one of the people that was astonished at how the 2016 election went.
No I didn’t vote for the guy and I hope he loses this time.
I dont even mind school taxes, actually. I just believe that the monies should follow the student and not the school district.
Because sometimes you don't have a say, or you don't expect to use it. No politician ever campaigned on making the lines at the DMV move faster. But we (mostly) all agree you should be required to get a license before you drive. Most Americans drive, and few have chose to route this "major part of their life" away from the DMV.
Immigration process (as this thread illustrates) sucks. It's also not a process used by voters.
The process to apply for welfare in most parts of the US sucks, but the actual welfare is valuable. People think by making it harder, it will instead result in people who are less reliant upon it. Welfare recipients are a huge political target constantly. They're the individuals who are "actively hated" in this example, and they're entirely dependent on the system in that moment, because thats how misfortune works.
Many cities making construction permits hard to get, because local residents don't want their neighborhood changing, so they petition local politicians to make the process slower/harder/more-expensive. In this example they "hate" the new construction.
If you're not a high schooler and you're applying to a state-funded university, the process to prove you're a local resident can be surprisingly complicated. This is because it's designed for high school students and all the edge cases are optimized to avoid accidentally providing tax-subsidized "in-state" tuition to an out-of-state resident. For example, I wanted to take a for-fun class at a local university and because I didn't have a local high school to vouch for my residency, I needed to provide (among other things) 50+ pages of tax documents. It took 2 semesters (1y) to prove I lived in the state, and the minimum amount of time you need to live in-state is 1 year.
People who live their life in the "happy-path" case often don't deal with the government, and don't understand the struggle of these edge cases. Plenty of activities require the government. No way around it. Sometimes, people who think "small government" is the solution end up making those processes terrible by making it understaffed or convoluted to "avoid waste".
During my naturalization I was caught by surprise by how quickly my application had been handled. The agent giving me the exam winked and said: "it's election season".
Whatever that means.
My father has only a certificate and no degree or anything like that.
It took him 20 years to get citizenship. We came 3 years after he come here and we all became citizens together.
My friends whose parents were doctors or had masters degree would get their GC and citizenships in like 5 years.
For those 6 to 8 years I had a student visa then an H1B. Despite having a PhD in the top US program in my field from a top five school.
My wife got her GC through the lottery before she finished university (ie w/ a HS diploma) with 0 years living in the US
To properly read this in your intended meaning, do we need to find the political and ethnic makeup of the immigration department? Or society at large?
Eg. Republicans hate taxes, so they defund the IRS (tax collectors), to make it harder for the government to audit tax evasion.
Perhaps too many software developers in the city government of Berlin broke the process to a point it now actually works.
https://imgur.com/a/t8rYOjv
The USCIS website also shows your status and gives a rough timeline.
Once your 'regular' visa expires you go onto a bridging visa which same, you can't really leave the country.
It's expensive as hell too: I think in the end I had a total cost of $7,000, just in application fees. Sounds like immigration is horrible everywhere.
Providing updates to everyone waiting simply wastes time and resources; again, you know roughly how long it's going to take as the estimated times are provided. Hassling the agent on your case is unnecessary.
Regarding leaving and returning Australia - Bridging Visa class Bs are made available if you have good reasons to be leaving and coming back.
I can see this from two sides - my (now ex) wife went through getting temporary then permanent residency in Australia; yes, it was a pain and expensive, but Australia has high standards of living etc, which is why lots of people want to come here. The other side is this - immigration is one of the reasons why there are not enough houses to buy or places to rent, making life difficult for citizens or people who have PR or TR. So if the process of having more immigrants who also require housing is expensive or difficult, I think you'll find a lot of people are not particular sympathetic.
People complain but its generally predictable save for applications for a 3 year visa can lead to a 1 year visa or a 3 year visa or a 5 year visa
There are 2 kinds of countries in Europe:
- Those where movies and TV shows are dubbed: Germany, France etc. Especially the older generations and working class don't speak English too well
- Those where movies are English with subtitles: Many of the smaller countries with their own native language. So everybody is exposed to English all the time and many speak English pretty well.
(Have not watched movies in the Netherlands, but I could guess many are not dubbed?)
In the case of Japan, you also have the insanely difficult writing system, probably the most difficult writing system in current usage. The German language might be difficult, but at least it uses an alphabet with a somewhat consistent spelling.
I loved living in Japan, but even where I lived in Shinagawa, it was very rare finding someone with any English skills at all unless they were young and college educated in the states.
I mean, what do you expect? European languages are all related to each other, so of course it's easier to figure things out by roots. Japanese isn't even remotely related to English, except through borrow-words. That said, I'm usually able to figure a lot of things out by simply reading the katakana, since 95% of the time it's just a borrowed English word. Of course, this depends a lot on what you're looking at: western foods almost always use katakana borrow-words, Asian foods almost never.
I guess you have never visited Finland, Estonia or Hungary...
This is a bit of an understatement. Japanese is a category-V language, taking an estimated 88 weeks of full-time study to learn, while German is a category-II language taking just 30 weeks.
Even better, it's 8000 yen, which with the current exchange rate is about USD $60.
However, I did not have any issues with the bridging visa. It gave me full rights to employment, medicare, and fair taxation (unlike the Work and Holiday Visa I started with, which drastically limited my ability to work, had me paying all medical expenses out-of-pocket, and taxed all my income at the highest tax bracket), and I traveled overseas a few times on it without any issues.
The application fees were expensive, but the bridging visa more than made up for it. I made much more money on the bridging visa than it cost me to apply, so even if my application had been rejected, I would have come out far ahead financially and had a lovely 2-year working holiday in Australia — far better than what the Work and Holiday Visa offers.
From a incentive strucutre POV, they lose nothing from false positives (denying entry to someone who would have been fine) as candidates will probably try again anyway, and no one will come after them for their shitty procedures as by definition applicants aren't full voting citizens and stay in a weaker position possibly all their life (imagine filing a complaint and having your name on a black list the rest of your immigration life, even if that list probably doesn't exist. That fear alone is enough to let a lot of things slide)
On your experience, it really feels like a PITA. It won't help, but Japan and France are basically the same. You'll see procedures listed as typically taking 2~3 months, check back every now and then, and low and behold a year and half later you have absolutely no idea of what's going on, if your submission has been forgotten or is contentious. There's no recourse as long as you haven't been refused, so it's limbo until something happens.
People are right to bitch about these lengthy and utterly frustrating procedures, I just don't see a way out of it short of being rich, famous or finding a loophole that lets you force a government agency do something in a timely manner without getting a target on your back.
To note, France had much progress in the last decades, in that bullshit requirements were made illegal a few years ago. At least you can check everything needed on an official site and not be subjected to petty additional requirements when dealing with the local entity (yes, that was a thing, probably to make it extra hard for specific portions of the population to properly file procedures)
When did you have this experience in Japan? In my experience, immigrating to Japan is a breeze. Even during Covid, it took about 2 months to process my work visa, and from there everything was fast and easy.
PR is pretty slow, though: my coworkers who have applied are reporting wait times of about 9 months.
The standard spouse visa was around 4 months (during covid as well) when it should have been pretty quick according to the clerk receiving it. Tried PR at two different times, first time I moved abroad after half a year, before it finished, second time was a year and half from now and it's still pending with no update.
On any of the visa I applied for I'm meeting the criteria on multiple standards (e.g. I'm both a spouse and father of a national, and employed locally) and never got a rejection, so it's just plainly taking a huge amount of time. I got used to it though.
PS: also it's hilarious to write about your romance with your partner, detailing your dates, attach Disneyland photos etc. and imagine officers in their suits reading all of that with straight faces.
Do you have any examples for this? Genuinely curious.
From where I stand most EU countries right now are talking steps backwards on this as they've become overloaded with migration waves, housing shortages, stagnating wages, which increased the far right support, so the hot topic now is how to discourage ALL immigration, not how to make life better and easier for SOME immigrants to attract them.
Sure, you obviously want to encourage the useful skilled immigration, but like I said, from where I stand it seems countries don't distinguish and are trying to make life hell for all immigrants just to plase the right wing voters since those would be frothing at the mouth if they heard their government is rolling out the red carped to attract SOME immigrants, so then for simplicity the political issue is binary, IMMIGRANTS or NO IMMIGRANTS.
The official website says the wait time for permanent residency is "up to 10 months", and searching Reddit suggests 3-6 months is more normal.
Denmark is not particularly welcoming to immigrants, but they do with rules rather than inefficient paperwork.
Also this "web ui" is so bad and difficult to work with. I lost all the data I input at least twice, also the forms do no seem up to date with the requirements (requirements on newindenmark are different from what is presented on the form).
Citizenship is not the same thing as permanent residence.
I strongly disagree. If you try to attract skilled labour, such hurdles can keep many of them at bay. Germany can become known as a country that's not worth the fight. I have seen a _lot_ of stories about people giving up and leaving, usually because of immigration office delays, but sometimes because they were worn down by other demands.
It also affects the bottom line as Germany becomes a country businesses avoid, either because it's too much effort to set up the business, or too much effort to attract international talent.
You are right that immigrants are invisible as a voter base, but the cumulative effects of their neglect are significant to the German economy, and to the pensions of people who can vote.
I think most immigration offices in the world are pretty much black boxes, mainly because that’s their coping mechanism to deal with the influx of bargaining from rejections they would otherwise have. But it would be nice to have… some proof of progress.
In many countries this is viewed as "it's not your fault, it's the state's fault that the state hasn't processed your application yet, so we will not punish you for the state's tardiness"
I think most countries are like this. Essentially, you are in a "on-hold" status until immigration decides your fate. It's supposed to be temporary but it can take years depending on the country and the circumstance.
The people working on immigration are not lazy or unmotivated, they are exhausted.
Some of the people involved can also be extremely unpleasant to deal with, even if you speak German.
My observation was that by simply changing the view on what is happening and extrapolating how to act based on that one can achieve quite a lot.
I told people the following:
1. The person dealing with you is not there to help you, they are simply executing an act of governance. Rather than wanting them to help you, try to help them close their tickt.
2. You are the type of immigrant people actually want. These popele see lots of drama, lies, heartbreak and hopelessness. If you are pleasant and well prepared they will probably like working on your case since it will not make them feel bad.
3. Things take time. Be as early as possible with everything and realize that there early is a way to speed things up.
Keeping those three things to heart worked very well. That does not make things faster, but it takes a lot of frustration out of the process.
The reality is that bureaucracies are full of humans – and we all know how humans are.
Meanwhile I can't choose between other government services while in Germany but those terrible forced upon me by the state.
There is no perfect competition, supply doesn't perfectly meet demand, and incentives aren't always perfectly aligned ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In any case, government services change through policy and, thus, indirectly, through the electorate. But a) it lags, b) is not the only issue the electorate care about, c) the supply of money is not infinite, d) the supply of labour is not fungible and e) in this specific case, policy on immigration is generally driven by people not immigrating, so the incentives are not aligned.
Still took months with no success, because the German bureaucracy is in complete disrepair and is brain damaged.
Waiting times are annoying, but that is because of an overloaded system, everything else was pretty painless.
Isn't this just German culture, though? I had that experience just buying groceries and going through the checkout line!
That’s nonsense. The Ukrainians go through an expedited process. Before the war we put in an application for my spouse - 3rd party national spouse of an EU citizen process - we applied pretty much the day after we arrived and a few days before we left the country to live elsewhere (2 1/2 years later) we got a letter that they are considering giving her an appointment.
The German bureaucracy sucks hard.
It does not really help to have separate queues if those are served by the same worker.
Sounds like that one was largely on you…
After being here for 10+ years straight, fully working. Existence of my whole family here and our whole life depended on it, yet I clealy hit a very incompetent (and completely unreachable) bureaucrat. My boss went through same process during mine, 3 weeks and done.
The difference? He is from western part of EU, I am from eastern. Shouldn't make a difference just like colour of skin shouldn't, but it does, in 1000 ways, subtle or not, but this was by far the worst and coming from state/canton.
Utterly miserable and prolonged experience, being in legal vacuum with small kids, while doing everything precisely and timely just like Swiss do and like to see in immigrants. Lost quite a few ideals about Switzerland during those desperate times.
He is living here for like 20 years and still has to fight every year or so for the permit extension.
But the lawyer also said that it would be worth trying a consulate overseas, as they were often a lot more efficient. So (as his wife had business in Berlin) he made an appointment with the consulate in Frankfurt. From interview to getting his passport back with visa - five days.
yep, you are German alright!
In practice, German schools are pretty decent, but they obsess about PISA scores and so neglect to ever notice what the schools are doing well. The train networks are fairly extensive, can be quite cheap depending on how you travel, and consistent across the country, but a lot of Germans would much rather complain about how late they are than recognise anything positive about the system. The general public transport networks (i.e. transport inside towns and cities) are amazing, and one of the things that I would most miss if I went anywhere else.
I think part of it is just that if you're German, you rarely see these systems from an outside perspective, so you only see the points that chafe regularly. But another part of it really is just that German tendency to criticise first rather than to view things holistically.
Somehow there should be a ranking of the foreign language abilities of countries. There Germany would do incredibly well.
It's strange that people obsess over math school rankings, but how many people do calculus beyond their schooling where as many, many people use a foreign language often in their work.
It's a non-BS thing people can learn at school and something that Northern Europeans do spectacularly well at.
Same with schools and educators. And don't get me started on healthcare.
Your sentiment is part of the problem to be honest: Germans are always complaining, it's fine as it is bla bla. It is if you compare yourself to third world countries. But we compete with Japan, Switzerland, the nordics and so on. Also note that this is not a sentiment that is only found in Germans but also a lot of (high value) immigrants who move on after touching base. Germany has a lot of potential but utilizes that very little.
Why would I recognize anything positive about the transport system that has a high likelihood of making my trip a nightmare? It's literally the most important thing, to get me from a to b. That doesn't work with massive delays, cancellations, reschedulings and I miss my connections.
There are serious structural deficiencies at Deutsche Bahn, absolutely. But the gras is also always greener elsewhere. The nordics don’t have a better train network.
It’s bad enough in Sweden that a Chinese company has started offering the MTRX, basically the ICE equivalent between the two largest cities (although much slower, more like an IC) and that’s the best connection you can get. Imagine the outcry if that was the case in Germany for Munich-Berlin…
The polar express from Stockholm to Narvik was awesome. On the trip down we had problems with construction and ice, so we were stranded in Abisko. We were taken with buses to a hotel, got food and even got a refund + 700skr deduction for our next trip. No questions asked. The experience was the opposite of the one you get in Germany. No bureaucracy. We got the SMS after Riksgränsen!
The next day I couldn't make my original train from Stockholm to Kopenhagen, so the train conductor just got me a new ticket for free. No questions asked. No bureaucracy.
Clear communication, situation well handled, all good. So at least this part blew my mind! Also the ticket control by just checking seats. Awesome.
But to present that as a full picture of the German transport system is to be completely myopic, and that's the issue. Yes, improvement is possible and necessary, but it's also nice to celebrate the successes of your country, and having a single system that covers pretty much all of the country, that integrates regional and intercity travel, that has a transparent and reasonably cost-effective pricing structure, that includes deals like the Länder-Tickets and the 49€ ticket, that is clean, and many other things besides feels like a success to me.
Do there need to be changes and improvements? Yes, of course! But this sort of self-flagellation ("oh woe is us, our transport system isn't perfect") is really tiring.
I'm not so sure at this point. Comparing ourselves to the UK would be sad tbh.
Yes the 49€ ticket is a nice achievement. But again, it's not about having a perfect transport system. It's having one that is representative to our position in the world, our wealth etc. Buses are something of a gamble. Trains are notoriously unreliable. The same goes for a lot of regional/local providers. That's basic. Things like nice seatings, luxuries, food etc. would make it perfect. But you need to cover the basics first.
So I think we need some of that outrage you're channeling in order to make our politicians (and society) accountable when they become too complacent. But I also think it's not effective when you overshoot and start painting in a much worse light than it actually is - because all those other countries have problems too. There's a lot that went wrong with Deutsche Bahn (and it's of course nowhere near the level of SBB in Switzerland), but most of the time the system is reliable, decent and high-frequency and -density enough, which is something that is just not true in many areas of the world, even in Europe (there are enough places even in Europe where you wouldn't want to live without a car).
And don't forget Germany has one of the lowest annual working hours in the world
https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
[1] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/global/tax-burden-on-labo... [2] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/tax-burden-labor-europ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Foundation
>Payroll taxes are typically flat-rate taxes levied on wages and are in addition to the taxes on income. In most OECD countries, both the employer and the employee pay payroll taxes. These taxes usually fund specific social programs, such as unemployment insurance, health insurance, and old age insurance.
Social security and pesnions aren't financed by taxes, in Germany taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose.
If you would replace social security and pension contributions by private insurances with the same costs people wouldn't have more money available but the Germany's index position would be better.
You could even double the costs and the index would claim an advantage for workers even though they would have less money.
> Social security and pesnions aren't financed by taxes, in Germany taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose.
Not sure I can follow. Of course the pensions and social security are quite substantially tax funded [2].
[1] https://de.statista.com/infografik/13660/oecd-vergleich-steu... [2] https://www.ihre-vorsorge.de/rente/nachrichten/haushalt-fuer...
Like I said, if all social security was through private insurance the tax burden would be lower but the people wouldn't have more money.
Health insurance proved otherwise. As long as you are healthy you pay less but as soon you get sick more often it gets way more expensive.
But the later wouldn't be recognized as tax burden.
Tax burden itself is a useless measure, the total cost of living is better.
It won't be that lower. The German pension has existing liabilities that they must pay. Since it is backed by the state, it will inevitably be paid by the taxes.
Even if the pension payments were abolished, just to pay existing entitlements, the taxes would be increased proportionally. The public pension can be considered a plus in a young country with a healthy demographics. In a geriatric state such as Germany, it is a big burden.
>Social security and pesnions aren't financed by taxes, in Germany taxes are not earmarked for a specific purpose.
This is wrong. Because the pension contributions are not enough to cover the payments, every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions. The German pension system is effectively bankrolled every year with the tax money.
>If you would replace social security and pension contributions by private insurances with the same costs people wouldn't have more money available but the Germany's index position would be better.
This is also wrong. The other countries have social security (For example: Australia). Unlike Germany, they don't charge for public pension separately. The contributions are included in the income tax. So it makes perfect sense to include it in the total tax burden for Germany.
[1]-https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-germany.pdf
Because the pension contributions are used for non-insurance benefits that should actually be paid for by all taxpayers, such as the mothers' pension or the equalization of pensions for retirees in East and West Germany.
BTW "every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions" proves social security and pension contributions aren't taxes. Tax money is a subsidy not the main source.
>This is also wrong.
That part is totally missing my point. It's about the ranking. Without public social security the ranking would be better but worse for the workers and just because it's a tax in Autralia you can't simply count it as a tax in Germany.
If you want to compare you need the total costs of living not the tax burden. Tax burden is just leverage to help companies and harm workers.
Replace taxes by fees and the tax foundation is happy, the people not so much.
Why would you compare total cost of living to find which country has the higher taxes? It doesn't make sense. Besides, you claimed Denmark had higher taxes. It has been proven that it was wrong.
>Tax burden is just leverage to help companies and harm workers.
I would like to hear how you reached this conclusion.
>just because it's a tax in Autralia you can't simply count it as a tax in Germany.
Yes you can, if your goal is to make a fair comparison between countries. The OECD uses it for measuring the tax burden on income. Especially because, the countries like Germany use 'creative labelling' to hide how much money they collect each year.
>Because the pension contributions are used for non-insurance benefits that should actually be paid for by all taxpayers, such as the mothers' pension or the equalization of pensions for retirees in East and West Germany. BTW "every year billions from the tax revenue is used to pay the pensions" proves social security and pension contributions aren't taxes. Tax money is a subsidy not the main source.
You've just proven my point. Because the money can be easily shuffled around, in practice, it is no different than income tax.
Of course if you are a civil servant or part of some mega union, but for the rest of the private plebs it is often 9h daily(because lunch break is not part of contract) and most do a long commute(because of eternal housing crisis) which may raise it to 12-14h easily.
"The data are published with the following health warning: The data are intended for comparisons of trends over time; they are unsuitable for comparisons of the level of average annual hours of work for a given year, because of differences in their sources and method of calculation."
Yes, in Germany are many part-time workers but overall mostly they are not working 6 hours the day . Normal is - afaik - 8 hours per day on approx. 220 days in a year.
It's not nationalism. Rather, there is some amount of willingness to give up personal comfort for some sort of general/societal greater good.
This is really something I've noticed compared to say the UK, Australia, certain asian countries, etc.
Not sure why it hasn't translated to improving bureaucracy.
[1] Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiwillige_Feuerwehr#Deutschl... (in German)
I wouldn't say that this comes anywhere close to many other countries in Germany. Societal coherence in e.g. Russia or Norway is much higher than in Germany.
I think it's rather the other way around: The countries you're comparing to might be exceptionally bad at it, and Germany is average.
Russia (with the exception of its ethnic minorities) is one of the most atomized societies in Europe, actually. The Russian dream is a house in the exurbs with a three-meter-tall impenetrable fence around the lot where you can do anything you want inside and no one will bother you.
I can't wait for the new Nigerian immigrant to swing his beer at Octoberfest arm in arm with the second generation Turk from Munich, all while the waitress, a temporary worker from the Czech Republic, rushes on.
It's not going to happen. Social cohesion is very low, and Germany failed to foster a sense of shared values among immigrants.
Wait, isn't that what's happening already? I'm pretty sure the temporary worker from the Czech Republic is there, as is the second generation Turk voting for Erdogan. Not fully sure about the Nigerian immigrant though.
And that is not good for fostering a collective spirit. The order-abiding nature of Germans collides with the people from country that are more used to bend the rules, so everyone is stressed and unhappy.
I guess it's what you call immigration made in Germany.
> The order-abiding nature of Germans collides with the people from country that are more used to bend the rules, so everyone is stressed and unhappy.
Ah, there is a bit of a cultural misunderstanding right there indeed. In Germany, what is not allowed is forbidden. You need a certain rigidity of mind to be able to think that way. In many other cultures, what is not forbidden is allowed. Meaning that a badly defined rule leaves lots of leeway for a bit of creative thinking. Those are two different worlds careening towards an inevitable collision course..
But yeah, there are a lot of negatives counterbalancing that.
(I lived in Germany for about a year as an American college exchange student)
Living here, i disagree. Just on my way to the train station i saw at least 10 cigarette butts on the ground. And its like that across the whole city.
They liked Spain a lot, but the first comment they made when we went for a walk was how clean the streets and the surroundings where.
Your cleanliness mileage may vary per Land, I guess.
Hardly. A lot of people buy into FUD without questioning it. A lot of people never question their government or rules no matter how stupid they are.
They'll just tell you to follow the rules even if you explain to them in a 100 page essay why those rules make no sense and are even detrimental.
They never acknowledge the possibility that their government/bureaucratic systems in palce can be faulty. If it doesn't work for you, then it must be your fault, not the system's fault.
It's the kind of blind trust in the system that lead to the Wirecard scandal happening under the watch of the entire world.
Rational people constantly question things, not trust and follow them blindly.
There's junkies fighting for crack in their underwear in minus degree weather right in the center of Frankfurt, shit and needles everywhere all around hauptbahnhof, come on.
Even though I'm currently in a "it's complicated" relationship with Germany, I moved here by choice because I loved the place. These things are still there, but since I'm working so close to Germany's problems, I let it get to me sometimes.
In terms of mentality, Bavarians are very different from Rhinelanders who are very different from East Germans. Berlin is a bubble in and of itself and can't really be compared to the rest. In general, Germans tend to take comfort in clear rules and structure, and are used to a certain kind of cutting through bullshit, both of which may be a good or a bad thing. I'll also add that, to my knowledge, no other country has reflected its own role in history as deeply and critically as Germany has, which to me comes as a bonus even when there is a tendency to overcorrect.
Food is IMHO not great (except Käsespatzle), but beer is some of the best in the world.
You hear people complaining a lot since they like to and we live with crazy priorities like "time to launch a company in days" but in the real world if we had a choice of where you are born Germany will be high on the list.
The biggest issue was that we needed one of my documents (the birth certificate) to have a seal of authenticity from my home country, which then all needed to be translated officially. That took longer than it needed to because we didn't realise it needed to be authenticated and so we got it returned at one point and needed to resubmit it. But apart from that, it was mostly a case of waiting for the formalities to go through - that took a couple of months in total, but it required relatively little work overall. I suspect in total, getting married in another country would have taken more work to organise and arrange, although it would probably have been quicker with the right combination of country and pre-existing documents.
Hundreds of non-resident trees marry in Denmark every week.
https://medium.com/@msosacordero/how-to-get-married-in-denma...
We've had a number of friends do the same due to similar issues, plus the German process can be very cost prohibitive once you start including official translators and such.
The Danish authorities accept a passport as a proof of ID, and the supporting documents can be in Danish, English or German.
I think most immigrants who get married in Germany are doing it for legal reasons primarily.
And in actual emergencies, these processes can be accelerated, like every other buerocratic process in Germany
This rubs me the wrong way a bit, and it’s because it’s clearly quite obvious there are many reasons you’d want to get married fast (emergency health issues, unplanned pregnancies, visa issues, etc etc. can come up with a million reasons easily).
You are really asking in a very ungracious way why doesn’t everyone just simply live like an ideal German.
Most pregnancies take a while, two weeks is plenty of time. Don't even get me started on how long immigration bureaucracy takes -- two weeks is a drop in the bucket.
There is quite a business around this.
Big brain move, how many innocent couples get caught in the net, versus how many fraudsters can you realistically catch (organized crime has figured out how to game the bureaucracy, no doubt).
If one doesn't respect German laws, best to go to a country which works differently and stay there.
Anyway none of this is about respecting German law.
sure, why not? People leave for various reasons. People are free to go.
> Anyway none of this is about respecting German law.
Law and traditions. Marriage is a serious decision with lots of implications. It's not the bureaucracy (alone), which slows the process down.
I think it is outrageous for a government to allege, or even just to investigate, particular causes for marriage unless one of the parties was coerced into it rather than wanting it out of their own free will.
allaboutberlin.com seems to be comparatively devoid of frustration and objectively lays out the situation + steps to be taken in each situation.
I often think about starting a community that functions like /r/berlin, but with a professional moderator like dang to maintain decorum, deduplicate threads, and generally keep the place tidy.
With Toytown Germany simply vanishing, there's both a need and a market for it. I just never want to be a moderator again.
If /r/berlin is anything like /r/japanlife, the problem IS the moderator.
I do place some blame on embassies not issuing documents in local languages. I’m not asking for proof I’m not married for fun! Extremely unhelpful, tho a good job generator for translators.
In the end tho, lots of these convos are based off of people coming from the Wild West of common law, which leads to the US government saying stuff like “well we don’t know if you’re married but you can sign an affidavit in front of us”. The American Empire, barely capable of a proper census!
Things can and should be improved, but I do think it’s good to be cognizant of the fact that many countries off of differing axioms (especially when it comes to things like the need/interdiction of knowing where your residents live)
How would a census help? That's just you declaring your marital status in front of them, without having to sign anything; it has even less probative value than what you're presenting as a stopgap measure that wouldn't be necessary if the census worked better.
But those records aren't really fit for the purpose of certifying that someone is not currently married, because (a) they do not include people who don't need to file taxes; and (b) they are only updated once a year.
For pretty much every other administrative purpose, it doesn't matter whether you're married or not, so I don't really see why you'd want the tax records updated more often.
Elsewhere in Germany, bureaucracy tends to be tedious but functional.
The neglicence of the state of Berlin is actually illegal in many cases. I once even asked a lawyer if I could sue them for their delays, but he wrote back to me to the effect that he was too much on good terms with them to sue, but that I could pay him some money (out of my pocket, of course) so he would go "talk" to them.
Data to back up your assertion that it’s only Berlin? I can speak for Düsseldorf, which is a total nightmare. Literally everything folks talk about regarding issues in Berlin also happens as a matter of course in Düsseldorf.
A friend of mine is high up in the NRW civil servants apparatus and he confirms it’s fucked across the board in NRW.
However, this is understandable given German history.
> However, this is understandable given German history.
So tired of this apologetics, modern German bureaucracy has been built exactly by former Nazis and Stasi agents.
I would argue that they are the best then to design something private :)
Seriously though if you're allowed to corner part of the population and brutally vent on them, next you'll need "privacy" to avoid consequences and revenge.
Sorry, I didn't mean it as an apology, it's more that I understand the historical context (at least that's what several Germans have told me).
I strongly prefer the system where I live, where I can pretty much arrange everything government-related from behind a keyboard and a universal authenticator (DigiD).
The modern US was founded by slave owners, Spain was a dictatorship for longer than most of Germany, Poland was sliding into illiberal democracy until very recently, most of Latin America seems one recession away from a coup or revolution, ... there is a lot of continuity between liberal democracies and authoritarian governments. The roots of German bureaucracy also go much further back than the Nazi era (at least to Prussia).
I'm not really sure what using loaded language like this accomplished, though.
How frustrating for London and Washington to fight and win a war against the Nazis, then occupy (the Western half of) Germany for 7 years, imposing a new government on the country -- all to no effect.
There are issues everywhere but Berlin is particularly bad. We weren't even able to hold a regular election without messing it up.
I'd need someone who is well-versed in "talking". (Feel free to dm via my email.)
Read this as a primer: https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/berlin-auslanderbehorde-ap...
German bureaucracy is (in)famous for paperwork and using faxes. Citizens/residents have no unique identifier (more and more weakened recently) and need to present documentation for everything. If you have no paper birth certificate you are not born...
Finland has had much higher digitalization for decades. You have a person number and authorities store everything centrally. A big brother nightmare for Germans.
20 years ago many processes in Finland went quickly, much more smoothly than in Germany. However, recently more and more authorities went into meltdown. It takes 3 or 6 months to renew a passport (or you queue in the street for many hours to get it done without an internet reservation). Certificates needed for inheritance processes delayed for many months each, so in the end heirs don't get access to their property until years later. If an elder person needs a legal guardian because they are unable to handle banking or similar anymore, you are more or less openly told: Does not make sense queuing, they will die first.
Where the degradation came from I have no idea. At least digitalization is not a guarantee that things work smoothly. In some areas (but probably none of those examples I mentioned) failed IT projects are the direct cause that processes break down.
- A limited company is not always a giant manufacturing concern
- An ever increasing amount of the population will not have been born in and will not be living their whole lives in Finland.
IT is a nice frontend for it and can serve you in many languages and with the latest and greatest UX - but the actual processes and decisions are not keeping pace. Changing these is a high-friction, low-reward endeavour for politicians.
[1] https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/contact-us/processing-times-...
In my opinion, the tax card system effectively just moves the deadline for the tax return to Nov/December so you can ensure it's completely up to date then and not pay anything extra.
They often try to recreate the paper process with IT, instead of making a complete new setup.
Example:
Previously, you had to go to the City Hall or whatever in your pace of birth to get a birth certificate.
Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail.
How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be much lower. A seal - and Germans love seals, they wank of to seals - can be forged much easier.
Lots of decision's, made no sense in software development.
But we must have process and governance in place. Let us set a meeting to discuss.
> Now you can email them, pay, and they mail you the certificate via snail mail.
> How it should be: Use an online token, log into your account, request a birth certificate and just print it. It should have a URL that can be used to verify that it is valid. This would be faster and the risk of forgery would be much lower. A seal - and Germans love seals, they wank of to seals - can be forged much easier.
That's an unreasonably high (or weird) standard. What country has a process like that? Switzerland certainly doesn't.
Even Brazil. Things like Background Check works like this. You can create a PDF that can be online validated.
Western consultancies win contracts to build IT systems. The project is outsourced to India for low cost. Indian outsourcing team hires the cheapest talent possible. Cheap talent provides cheap quality. Website is bloated and slow. Some person on the internet uses these systems, hates it and develops a strong negative bias for all Indian (replace with any 3rd world country) talent.
On the other hand, Indian Govt hires the competent Indians at fair prices. (These aren't even our best or that well paid). It treats them with (moderate) respect and allows them to own their projects. Indian Govt. websites turn out to be seamless, performant and handle 10x the scale of western IT systems. This is a recent phenomenon, but India's digitization of railways, covid management, aadhar, social welfare and UPI has been best in class.
Reminds me of when westerners visit India, eat at the most suspicious looking street food place, and inevitably get sick. You never want your street food (programmers) to be cheaper than the bar set by local middle class (or their taxes). Yeah, outsourcing will save money. But, have some standards.
You get what you pay for.
There is some weird notion in populace that if we cut the funding, the public services will "get handle of themselves" and become more cost efficient. That's what a reasonable individual would do in tougher times. What happens in reality is that the nepotist core in public services will entrench and be fine or even better off, while the society will be told to suck it up.
Honestly, the whole funding debate for public services is often so facile and ideologically entrenched. Both sides are right: Public services _are_ invariably inefficient, and cutting funding _does_ invariably do little to increase efficiency. But neither side will accept the validity of the other's argument and so we end up with this cycle of alternating governments imposing austerity and generosity.
The NHS used to be very efficient, when it was managed largely by clinical staff. Now it has as many professional managers as clinical staff, and they all have to be paid...
Also an awful lot of the NHS fuctionality is now farmed-out to private healthcare companies, who need their rake-off.
As far as "professional managers" is concerned, these guys are mostly NHS managers, not the kind of managers that could easily transfer into a private company. Their expertise is in some obscure corner of the NHS.
I don't want my taxes to pay for a desk that I have to go to to show my passport to someone so they can make me an ID card with the same information as the card that the man-with-the-gun-at-the-airport thought was OK enough to let me in to the country with, but the bank won't accept as strong enough proof of ID. Bureaucracy is not a service.
[1] - https://vm.fi/en/the-budget
Then there is the war in Ukraine. Normally, Russia is one of the most important trading partners of Finland. But when it doesn't know how to behave, a large part of foreign trade is missing, and the economy suffers.
Partially explains why there is no light in the tunnel of the state budget.
But it does not explain why many authorities are struggling with services for residents which worked better a decade ago. It is not so that authorities would have experienced severe cuts in budgets or headcount during the last 2 years.
The was a first overheating boom in the end of the 1980s, until a heavy recession took over in the 1990s. The next boom was Nokia driven in the 2000s until the global banking crisis. Since Nokia has fallen (well, it still exists but with a different business and more modest success) there has been little to no growth and heavy deindustrialization.
So basically Finland is back to the previous state of being a poor country with weak industry (I am exaggerating a bit). But the spending has continued to grow like the Nokia boom years had never ended.
Edit: Finland has one of the least favorite population pyramids in Europe. People getting older and no children. Very little immigration until maybe the last decade. And now a far right government with a strong anti-immigration agenda.
The EMU is a mechanism effectively set up to extract wealth from the european periphery, for the benefit of Germany (and maybe to a lesser extent Framce). Finland is very much on the losing side, along with Greece, Portugal etc.
Perhaps with the difference that the culture is very protestant, with high trust in government. So rather than letting the situatiom deteriorate to what it was in southern Europe durkng the Euro crisis, the populace will flock to the stern faces speaking of deficits in the media, and dutifully vote them in.
Nonsense. „Devaluating the national currency“ is a euphemism for extracting wealth from the citizens without them realizing getting poor. The stability criteria are there to protect you from a government destroying your money.
I don’t get why so many Europeans think the Euro is hurting them economically while in reality it was holding them back (especially in Greece and Italy, their national currency was practically worthless). However, it takes time for member state governments to get used to an independent central bank.
Best regards and hot kisses from Germany.
True. When Finland dropped 2 digits from its currency in the 60s the Finnish Mark and the German Mark where roughly 1:1. When the Euro was introduced 40 years later the exchange rate was 3:1. So 200% inflation over the years more than Germany which was far from stable either. So Finland was a high inflation country all the time.
I don't think high inflation countries are known for good economy. Finland for example had massive emigration. I don't think by having continued the high inflation route after 2000 the situation would be significantly brighter today.
Any large org tends to get more inefficient with time as it accumulates inefficient components it can't get rid of, but unlike companies, government departments aren't going to go bust and close down.
I genuinely don't know a good answer here, but would be curious about other people's.
Perhaps that's fundamentally barking up the wrong tree. West-European governments in the post WW2 era have had higher relative spendings then that, without every financial expert and their dog declaiming that doomsday is near and services need to be cut.
We've been able to finance better healthcare before, we've able to finance better education before, we've been able to finance better infrastructure before, etc. So which costs have risen out of proportion to the point that none of that is possible today.
Basically all of them.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...
Which I think is partially due to institutions becoming less efficient with time as more organizational scar tissue accumulates (certainly seen a lot of this at the companies I've worked for). Plus gov departments tend to accumulate extra low-return responsibilities from politician gimmicks (the mismatch between what sounds good in a headline and whats cost effective).
Which in turn I think comes from scope insensitivity, we just aren't good at understanding scale and underestimate defuse costs.
It's not the costs that have rise sharply, it's the revenue and taxes that have declined since WW2 due to increased competition from globalization and the offshoring of jobs abroad, plus tax heavens aiding big corporation avoid paying taxes locally in western european countries, meaning governments today are missing out on a lot of income they used to get in the past, income which is now in places like China and in tax heavens.
But taking job offshoring, as an example. It could be fairly straightforward to determine how much tax revenue a car produced in, say, Germany, contributes to the economy, vs the same car imported from abroad. But where it gets complicated is that, German unemployment being low, the worker that lost his or her job to offshoring didn't turn out jobless, and by his or her work is still contributing to tax incomes. So what is the loss?
A lot of money is lost to tax havens, but the hourly productivity has also increased drastically, meaning that governments might still get more income per worker, per working hour. Governments are loosing in absolute terms, but have they lost income in relative terms?
The general feeling I have, is that a lot more money is lost to greed. As an example, we could take healthcare. It is undeniable that the average quality of healthcare has increased (for instance, looking at cancer suitability), but the cost of basic healthcare items have also, in some cases, increased disproportionately. (For instance looking at the cost of insulin in the US, or a dose of COVID vaccine, etc). So the general impression is that we are paying a lot more than before for only a slight increase in health and well-being.
And how does that apply to other trades? Construction costs have exploded, but we are not getting much better houses for it.
And therefore the general question was more: which parts of society are profiteering from forms of greed and price-gouging, how can we quantify that, and what can be done about it so that we, as a society can continue to improve on the care and the services we offer to our citizens, as opposed to accepting regression as the inevitable way forward.
Less bargaining Power and less wages therefore less revenue for the state and spending power for the people.
Decades ago a factory worker could support a family. That's not the case anymore.
Offshoring doesn't automatically result in mass unemployment.
I've been looking at the inflation + CPI index in Europe [0] over the 1990-2020 period. The result is that for an equivalent €100 in 1990, you would need to earn about €200 in 2023. According to [1], the wages in Germany have not increased enough (due to the well known wage stagnation of the 2000-2008 era). But the wages in France [2] (with data over the 2000-2023 period) have. Over the 2008-2019 period, the wages in both countries were increasing at the same rate.
The inflation + CPI index is not perfect, but it gives an indication of the costs changes of a "representative" consumer basket. With our sample of 2, this means that those basic costs have not increased disproportionately w.r.t. wages over the 1990-2023 time period. The pill was a bit harder to swallow for the Germans, but they also started at a higher level.
But what the inflation + CPI index totally fail to take into account is the explosion of other costs that now put single-income families in great difficulties w.r.t. a few decades ago. And the mechanism behind those costs increase is the one that would be interesting to understand and analyze.
[0] https://www.inflationtool.com/euro
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/416207/average-annual-wa...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/416204/average-annual-wa...
>We've been able to finance better healthcare before
Modern healthcare is better than anything before. Even in its dysfunctional state it is better. Sure, you might have to wait longer to see a specialist, but the number of cases where the reply you get is "nothing we can do" is lower.
The things you mention are more expensive to provide today. One of the reasons is that our requirements for those services are much higher leading to much higher inherent costs.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
This is the Gini coefficient for those countries: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=F...
Looking at France and the quality of their industrial output in the 70s to 90s, ranging from high-speed trains, rockets, passenger airplanes, Concorde, helicopters, (racing) cars, submarines, nuclear power plants, medical labs, etc. I would say yes. Their infrastructure has also been of high quality, so has the education system of their elites, and their healthcare.
And from what I could see of Belgium and their infrastructure, it also looked like that period was good for them.
> Modern healthcare is better than anything before. Even in its dysfunctional state it is better.
This is a more relevant point. The question is if we aren't well past a point of diminishing returns. For instance, for France, the data shows that the life expectancy of women was increasing by 2 years every 10 years, until 2010. It has increased by 0.5 years since then. The life expectancy of men followed a similar trend.
In fact, we might not have seen the full effect dysfunctional health care just yet, and we could be riding on the momentum of previous gains. And the ever increasing delays to see a specialist can only have detrimental effects in the long term. In parallel, the disproportionate increase of healthcare costs per patients means that, at some point, life expectancy is going to go down.
> One of the reasons is that our requirements for those services are much higher leading to much higher inherent costs.
No, I don't think I agree. The house you are getting has not improved 3 fold in quality compared to 20 years ago. The roads you are driving on are not 2 times better. Train travel is not a lot safer, nor faster, nor with more frequent service. On the contrary. The food quality in your supermarket has not improved. The electricity you use still has the same voltage and the same frequency. The clothes you wear are not of higher quality.
France also has kind-of a colonial empire still going on. Could that have an effect?
>The house you are getting has not improved 3 fold in quality compared to 20 years ago
That's true, but there is likely the 80/20 principle at play. Every additional level of quality costs more and more to achieve. Not to mention that often the increase of quality isn't really noticeable. Eg lead paint vs not, better wiring (fewer house fires), better insulation (lower heating costs), better air circulation (less mold) etc.
You also have the problem of survivorship bias. The old homes that are still used today are the probably the better ones. The worse ones from back in the day just didn't last.
But all-in-all, I can only suggest reasons. I'm from a former Soviet state. Some of the transformations are that good. Eg sidewalk roads actually feel 2x better if not more. These days they are nice and smooth roads you could skateboard on. Back in the day I'm not sure I would even want to ride a bicycle on them because they looked like the surface of the moon. And clothes are much cheaper in relative terms and even in absolute terms. But I think this is an exception and not a general trend.
They were officially post-colonial by that time, and what is left is perhaps more a financial drain than a net income gain, although geostrategically invaluable.
> Every additional level of quality costs more and more to achieve. Not to mention that often the increase of quality isn't really noticeable. Eg lead paint vs not, better wiring (fewer house fires), better insulation (lower heating costs), better air circulation (less mold) etc.
They might increase cost, or they might not, as they are logical continuation of progress (as in, does lead-less paint really cost more to produce than leaded paint?) but in the end, they are "marginal" costs on a house, maybe in the order of 15%? So by themselves, they are not going to increase the price by 300%.
> I'm from a former Soviet state.
That brings a very different perspective, yes. Having spent quite a lot of time in eastern Europe, it is clear that the life experienced in that period was very, very different, and that many improvements where brought in, in quality and quantity.
But taking the road example, if you go to Belgium, you will have the joy of experiencing the inverse phenomenon, with a decrepit infrastructure that has been much, much better in the past. Imagine the moon surface you described, and then on a motorway, with cars driving by at 130 kph.. I've seen motorway signs covered in moss, as if an apocalypse had hit.
For clothes, I have items that were bought at the turn of the century and are still "wearable", but no recent clothing item seem to survive more than a year or two, independently of the cost. Which is an annoyance: I wouldn't mind paying more for something that lasts, but, so far, haven't found a brand that does. Of course, the current state of affair is an upgrade on the quality and quantity of clothing that was available in ex Eastern-block states. (Although, as bad as the fabric and colors were, I can only assume that they were built to last?)
The better metric would be how many employees work (directly or indirectly) for the government and then compare those numbers.
This is really the crux of it. Same incompetence and inefficiency, we see in tech industry. Are there any serious studies on the disease that comes with scale, and possibly its cure?
Over time I developed a more cynical theory. As politicians have extremely short-term understandings and targets, they abuse the latent momentum of public services to surf on the inherent delayed response before service quality goes down and gets noticed. By then, they can blame the cause on something else, and move on to the next cost-cutting measure.
Even if there is an outcry, they can gaslight citizens into believing either that a) it was not better before or b) the changes are an imperious necessity that cannot be reversed.
Either way, the personnel and knowledge has been lost, so the service (and the quality-of-life that came with it) are lost forever.
(opinion) Human society large rewards narcissism. Diligence is usually rewarded with exploitation. There's actually academic supporting the 2nd. Therefore, most politicians are largely selfish and mostly interested in being on TV, being the center of attention, and holding sway over other citizens. (Not all, just the majority). The only metric is "what gets elected." However, like "green" anything, the optimization is usually "do nothing, and color the corporate logo green."
Causes further issues. The optimization becomes, "focus on highly incendiary minutia, while avoiding anything risky, and maximizing viewer attention and anxiety." Issues that will allow them to say they're valiant, while exposing nothing especially damaging for the next election.
The American fiscal funding fiasco this / last year is typical. 6 months, and America finally has a budget. All the while, it's mostly arguments about minutia like "Homeland Security impeachment", who the speaker is, where Military can get abortions, whether a base will get funding, migrants on buses, and weekly CR shutdown "thwarting". It literally became weekly federal budgets around Feb-Mar in America... Meanwhile, a lot of enlisted in those abortion / base (yes/no?) states are wondering whether they're going to get paychecks. People on boats complain about having no ammunition to shoot with...
London's sewers are another excellent example. Dithering and dithering about repairs, about maintenance, about public toilets. Except the Thames is bright yellow, people won't go swimming, and when somebody asks, they're response is "well, btw, we're actually £18,000,000,000 in debt. Make -£2,000,000,000 per year. Have for years. Nobody even noticed. lolz." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Water Obvious optimization, nationalize while decrying the evils of the private sector. Quietly also nationalize the debt to the public in a line item somewhere that nobody writes about. Squander resources for years. Sell back to industry claiming the salvation of capitalism.
Ah, the privatization switcheroo.
1) Have a state develop and pay for expensive and necessary assets
2) Preach that privatization is necessary because -something-something-government == inefficient.
3) Take prized assets at a bargain price. Under-invest chronically and strip valuable assets
4) Get paid again when company is re-nationalized
5) Goto 2)
To make the different steps smoother, you can add a good government-industry revolving-door policy. Nothing helps capitalism efficiency more than a bit of cronyism.
I've never actually looked at the German budget (quasi B1 deutschkenntnisse and no training in economics, what would I get from reading them?), what I can say is that it's very easy to fall into the trap described by Chesterton's fence and call for the removal of things because you don't understand them, not because they're actually bad.
For example, someone I used to know in the UK said much the same about his taxes paying for schools, just because he personally didn't have kids.
>For example, someone I used to know in the UK said much the same about his taxes paying for schools, just because he personally didn't have kids.
This isn't what I said. If I pay half of my wages to the state I would expect them to manage to staff government offices. Maybe besides defense, basic administration has to be the most important function of the government, as nearly every other activity relies on it. There is zero doubt in my mind that there is something less important in the budget than performing the core functions of any government.
Dankeschön.
If I'm reading this right (I may not be, see previous comment: I am not an economist), half of the revenue is spend on social security: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Government/Public-Finance/...
This is weirdly out of date, I don't know why the link was to a URL from 2013 whose content is about 2017, but it says for that year, 57% was social security: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Government/Public-Finance/...
> This isn't what I said.
Indeed, it was an example of the category alone, and not even intended to imply you have that specific detailed opinion.
Thing is, the stuff I linked to are all vague large-scale groupings, and I can't dig into any of them and say "Max Mustermann from the… *rolls dice* cultural affairs department, is spending too much on… *rolls dice* trying to promote Sendung mit der Maus to… *rolls dice* the Swiss" — and even if I could dig in at that level, I wouldn't be able to comprehend the value, only the cost.
(Würde jemand sagen, "von allem den Preis, von nichts den Wert", oder ist das nur die Uberzetsung des Oscar Wild Zitat?)
There's 2.713 million unemployed.
552.89 euros per person per… year? Even per month that does not seem unreasonable.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=€1.5+billion%2F2.713+mi...
1.5billion per month is the salary of 300.000 office worker. So Germany needs 1 person to manage 10 persons … so why the fuck does it take 3-6 month until they reply ? It’s , here the end of contract and give me money till I have a new job or for max a year.
A common suggestion I've heard, is that the cost of hiring someone is around twice their actual pay (things like insurance, HR, rent or maintenance on the office building, equipment, site security etc.), which means half as many case workers, and each case worker probably has 20 unemployed people.
> so why the fuck does it take 3-6 month until they reply ? It’s , here the end of contract and give me money till I have a new job or for max a year.
You could try working for them to find out? Ich vermute, dass meine deutschkenntnisse ist nicht gut genug für das.
My guess, based on all the customer support workplaces I've heard about is: 85% of the people in the system are basically fine, 10% have difficulty understanding the system, 5% are a colossal PitA who need to be constantly chased or are even outright disruptive — and most of the cost is with that 5%.
There was a right wing government in Finland before 2019 and there is a more far-right wing government since last year.
I don't like either of them for their politics, but I cannot see how they could be blamed for authorities getting increasingly dysfunctional. They have not done anything like fired 50% or even 20% of the employees.
This is nonsense. Your statement is flatly an ideological talking point in no way backed by actual practical evidence or a reasoned argument of the situation. Government budgets in most european states, (Finland included) have continuously gone up for decades and increase in complexity. A strong ideological focus on claiming "right-wing austerity" has been a common narrative despite nothing about these growing budgets matching that at all. The very idea presupposes that any current amount of spending, no matter how large, has no business being criticized at all and that it's "extreme" to argue that the state could afford to be more agile in doing better with slightly less % of GDP.
Aside from the fact that government budgets are at record levels of economic output anyhow, no, the state shouldn't just automatically have a right to these absurd budgets with any pushback being called "austerity". or "right-wing".
Driving license not much different.
For most people, paying taxes is a non-event, and tax returns happens automatically in most cases.
Then the bad: - Firearm licenses: more like months if not years in some cases. - Birth and marriage certificates: 4-6 months - Permission for building/construction/alterations: Don't even waste your time. - Healthcare: get private insurance if you value your life. - Public transport: lol
It's interesting how in sufficiently large and complex bureaucratic systems (Governments, Microsoft, etc), you get little pockets of excellence because somewhere in the mess of it all, there is someone who cares about their job, and they put the effort in to make it better for their users/customers.
In South Africa's case, these pockets of excellence are often and frequently replaced, because they are being measured by different metrics than what we as citizens care about, and deemed lacking: Party first, enable corruption, etc. So then you have these government institutions that every 10-15 years or so get renewed, and then coast on that renewal while it gradually goes to shit, before someone steps in and fixes it all up, before them being fired again for not allowing the right amount of corruption to take place. Vicious cycle.
I'm currently also an expat living in the EU. The common sentiment from a lot of other South Africans here is to go back to SA for a 2 week holiday to get your passport. Apparently dealing with anything home-affairs related via your local embassy is a total shitshow. People have been waiting years for birth certificates for new babies and such.
It seems that the intersection between Home Affairs and International Relations (embassies) is in total shambles.
Also, two Eastern European countries that I have first-hand knowledge of: Poland and Estonia are much more digitised and efficient at those things than Germany (and, from what GP wrote, it seems Finland as well?).
Moreover prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain the term Central Europe wasn’t used much. After that though some people like Milan Kundera started popularising it much more out of sense of inferiority.
Estonia belonged to the East, even though not voluntarily.
They actively left the Eastern block when they had the chance (like most of the others, so the block is no block anymore), but the terminology lives on, especially used by people who did not suffer from it.
A couple of years I went to a technical event. The event T-shirts were red. Someone from an "Eastern" country felt very negative about that: "We had communism, I will never wear a red T-shirt."
Those in the "West" who don't have the history of suffering don't have any strong feelings about those old things. Many of those who suffered (either personally or at least in stories from their parents) can be rather sensitive about such "mistakes".
Should be a big brother nightmare for all humans.
Your number is 666.
There’s always a lot of hand-wringing and FUD around giving people ID numbers, but never a coherent rational argument. What makes it a big brother nightmare for all humans?
There are many still alive who remember the evils done by the Stasi, when I was a child, there were many who remembered the evils done by the Gestapo; when those are your core examples of a citizen database, such thing naturally seems "big brother".
The irony is the mirror image: America seems almost* totally willing to have private databases while disliking government ones, Europe seems almost* totally willing to have government databases while disliking private ones.
* to anyone about to reply "not I": don't be blind to the "almost", I know many here will be exceptions
Really? For what purposes exactly?
And you think that those fine granularities are really needed?
Your argument boils down to “let’s purposely make our government inefficient because it might one day turn on us”
Which, judging from other countries, is actually the opposite of what happens.
The worst offenders of human rights and government overreach are the ones that don’t have their shit together.
But for what do a drivers license database, social security numbers exist? And why should a country/state know your bank account number(s)?
Etatism is cancer.
To keep bad drivers off the road? To suspend privileges when you kill someone with your car?
Social security numbers were originally created for linking people to their social security accounts but has now become our national ID because there is an inherit need for one in the modern world. The problem with SSNs is that they were never designed for their current use-case.
> And why should a country/state know your bank account number(s)?
A state will always have access to and the capability of seizing your account funds. This is a necessity for a multitude of reasons that I can list out, but I'll let you use your imagination.
Take a look around the world. Take a look at history. Autocrats don't need an efficient ID system to take control of their citizens. People willingly give up their freedoms and align themselves with autocrats when they use the same propaganda and fear-mongering tactics that have been used for centuries. It has nothing to do with the government amassing a database of their population. Once the autocrats are in control, they will create whatever system they require.
The only way to avoid tyranny is to fight for liberal values at the ballot box. Anything else is bullshit. Your guns won't do shit when your local militia is aligned with the autocrat in control.
A document is not sufficient for that? Doubt it.
> Social security numbers has now become our national ID because there is an inherit need for one in the modern world.
Why?
> A state will always have access to and the capability of seizing your account funds. This is a necessity for a multitude of reasons that I can list out, but I'll let you use your imagination.
But not one good reason. For law enforcement, there are other possibilities.
> Take a look around the world. Take a look at history. Autocrats don't need an efficient ID system to take control of their citizens.
But pseudo-democracies do.
> The only way to avoid tyranny is to fight for liberal values at the ballot box. Anything else is bullshit. Your guns won't do shit when your local militia is aligned with the autocrat in control.
No. The only way is to send politicians with their political idiocies to hell and establish direct democracies. When the people have to participate in the organisation of a country/state (or better in a cooperation of peoples; is there really a need for geographical limits?), and discuss the distribution of resources, instead of just balloting from time to time for one or another political idiocy, don't you think they could make that way better than the current systems?
actually that's not true: people in Germany have MANY unique IDs: they have not one but TWO tax identifiers ("Steuernummer" and "Steuer ID"), social security number ("Sozialversicherungsnummer"), national ID number ("Personalausweisnummer"), passport number ("Reisepaßnummer") and health insurance ID ("Krankenversicherungsnumer"), among others.
We've been arguing with authorities, send hundreds (not an exaggeration) of papers to different involved parties, but still, one and a half year after purchasing a bit of real estate, we are not even allowed to start building. This includes dozens of funny anecdotes, an example would be changed rules for the width of your fence gate - meaning that you have to scrap the old one and have someone build a completely new one because it was 3cm (!) to narrow. Of course, it would take weeks after applying for the building license before any of their concerns would be communicated to us.
I don't think digitalization would solve this. If you have a shitty process and digitalize it, you have a shitty digital process. I do think arbitrariness of the people involved at the government offices and the time it takes them to react is way more of an issue.
If you just give me a bunch of paper to fill in, with actually understandable instructions, that's fine. Digitalization would save me a day here because I'd get it directly, but that doesn't really help if it takes six weeks for the clerk to actually react.
Neighbouring country here. The clerk has to react within six weeks, but to satisfy the letter of law, the reply is "we received your requeat and it's being processed"
The actual reply takes ~6 month.
True. And not only for Germany
(The Netherlands might be a good second choice as well)
If you immigrate to Germany then you need to instantiate yourself in the German bureaucracy everywhere at once, and that bureaucracy has a hostile indifference to the concept of immigrants.
Have you ever changed cities and needed to change Finanzbehörde? Have you ever registered for driving school? Have you ever tried changing from one driving instructor to another? Have you ever got married in a district where there are no appointments for marriage? Have you ever been unable to take your children out of school to attend a family funeral in a different country? Have you ever purchased a car in a State different from the one that you live in? Have you ever had to experience the nightmare of applying for unemployment money? Have you ever tried picking up your child's sick notice without their insurance card, but just only your own ID?
I could go on and on... Not all of these are on the same level of annoyance/senselessness but there are countless more examples. The bureaucracy and stiff insistence on following processes and rules at the expense of common sense are everyday occurrences.
In my experience what is most amazing is how most citizens of this country just accept this and don't find it unusual.
What's so difficult about that? That was 10 minutes long process for me. I changed cities so I had to change the driving school as well and there were no issues at all.
> Have you ever tried changing from one driving instructor to another?
I haven't but my school encourages people to do that if they find that they don't click with their instructor.
Not arguing with the rest though.
However, I read several more recent stories where parents in the UK got into trouble (had to pay fine, or got in contact with the police) because their kid did not attend a few school days, but with the parent's consent.
Both countries have mandatory school laws.
> In my experience what is most amazing is how most citizens of this country just accept this and don't find it unusual.
Most Germans are obedient to authority, which seems one of the main reasons why the holocaust could happen (read about Milgram's 1961 obedience experiments worldwide, Munich "scored" top on this sad metric).
Also, people that have only lived in one country don't know it any other way. Perhaps everyone should move to Estonia for a year to open eyes...
I really do not get these complaints at all. Even Taxes can be filled out easily with a pretty good online form. None of the bureaucracy ever happened to me, except it is annoying to book appointments. The only things that need addressing are the chronically understaffed government offices and the ridiculously high taxes which are constantly being wasted on utter nonsense.
Any process around immigration seems pretty awful, just based on the overwhelmed and (often) unhelpful offices (based on reports from the former friends again).
On the other hand, buying and registering a car was quite easy and possible online, besides picking up the car at least. (With some caveats though. Wanting an electric license plate at the time needed me to go by in person to show them the certificate of the car.)
This is why I never really covered studying or raising children.
German bureaucracy is hyperlocal. I rely on more and more on a local network of experts to do a good job. In Munich I'd be mostly starting from scratch.
However most of the website covers all of Germany. A smarter person would have started All About Germany, if only for SEO purposes.
Basically it's the German-grade paper bureaucracy described here, but spiced up with a truckload of what i would describe as "negative global southern stereotypes":
- Everything has to be strictly processed by the book, but ... - "the book" closes Friday at noon, no wait, today it was 10:00, come by next month, we only process such requests on the first friday of the month. Oh wait, Mrs Soandso is on vacation next month, would June suit you? - the one managing "the book" doesn't like your face/surname/tone/something? You might wanna try another city ...
In short: it's all strict and utterly beaucratic like you'd expect in Germany, but at the same time ripe with small time corruption, incompetence, and petty xenophobia
(Small anecdote: I actually once had to get a lawyer to register a company, since the person responsible for my file at the business court thought my surname was sounding a bit too "foreign" and demanding I present a valid staying permit -- which I do not need (and therefore couldn't even get) in Austria. Straight up refused to process my filing until my lawyer requested a legal statement in writing)
A solution for this in my opinion would be to centralize these processes and make them online, like making a government portal for the whole country. But for that many rules should be changed, which is highly unlikely.
[0] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/zwei-jahre-warten-auf-die... (German)
The processes are going to be online, this is mandated by law, it will take years, but it is being worked on (some are already available online). They will still be provided by the respective municipality.
See also: The Checkpoint Charlie scene from the 1985 movie Gotcha!
There are good and important reasons certain public institutions aren't allowed to share data by default but instead of making that data sharing opt-in, it's completely offloaded to you personally.
Kindergeld is a fantastic example of bureaucracy that could be abgeschafft.
Of course because the FDP conveniently forgot that its "Bürgergeld" was supposed to be a form of UBI and decided to simply rebrand social welfare (aka Hartz IV) instead, we're now in a perverse situation where the thing that was supposed to be a universal basic income is instead very much not universal and even takes Kindergeld into account if the child is part of the household.
That said, turning the Kindergeld into a UBI would also mean abolishing the Kinderfreibetrag which acts regressive (i.e. in effect, higher income families receive more benefits per child than lower income families). It would also make it easier to justify closing the loophole of migrant workers collecting child benefits for children in their home country given that a UBI could reasonably be restricted to national residents rather than all EU residents (which is the concern with limiting child benefits the same way).
"ING: You need German permanent residence or citizenship to open an account. Some students could open an account with a residence permit. Their customer support speaks English."
Can you tell me more? When and where did you open an account? What residence title do you have and what is your nationality? Feel free to email me the answer if you prefer privacy.
Opened end of 2022, fully online. I have italian citizenship; my residence title was just... resident? I had the Anmeldung for the apartment I was living in.
But it wasn't all easy. I needed:
- A german telephone number.
- A document (with a MRZ) with my german address in it.
- Not sure but maybe they also asked about my job?
The document was critical for me; I had to go to my embassy and apply for a new id that had my german address.
Also everything was fully in german, no english whatsoever.
A few other people I know who left after a couple of years say the same - endless bureaucracy and extremely dysfunctional local governance (eg: the clusterfuck with rent control where some people had to pay backrent) made the decision to leave easy.
Any recommendations what would be the best place to found a company for someone who's living in Germany?
You will still have to pay your personal taxes in Germany, if you reside there.
Basically, the system works in general for the average population but is broken such that it affects most those at the margins (for example, the rich, the poor, those entrepreneurial, etc).
In other countries, when this happens, you see the rich paying their way to access while the poor generally suffer until some populist movement comes and promises to save them.
It's thus really not that surprising, I just had yo change my view on where I placed each country in this developed/developing country mental model
As far as I can tell, this is not an option in Germany, certainly not cheaply. Healy, one of the global companies that does this kind of thing, wants €14000 to create a GmBH for you, and I'm pretty sure that doesn't speed up things, it just makes it somebody else's headache.
Nobody thinks that. Everybody knows how much bureaucracy sucks, and everyone regularly rages about the insanity and traps. There are whole TV-Shows about the bullshit done there. But people can't change it, so they just accept it, and know it could be worse.
The most depressing thing is that EU citizens don't even see any problem with that.
I'm very happy to be living and building business in Estonia instead. Establishing the company is easy and everything else except KYC meeting in bank can be done online. Also in Estonia companies don't pay any taxes on yearly profits. Almost all of the government officials speak fluent English except in the case where I wanted to have company owned car. Would highly recommend this option for others too if you can relocate easily. They even changed the rules in 2023 and now even 1€ initial capital is enough.
The problem is that you need to pay taxes in the country where the work was physically done. So if you have Estonian company while living in Germany typically the same taxes need to be filed and paid compared to having a GmbH in Germany. Plus you need to also do the taxes in Estonia as well so you would end up having double bureaucracy instead.
You can read about tax agreements between your country of residence and estonia to find out more. I'm not a lawyer and this is simplification and Can even be wrong but it's the best understanding I have so far.
This isn't an optimisation and doesn't matter unless I'm misunderstanding what is being suggested. Multiplication is commutative so it doesn't matter if you pay the taxes before or after accruing returns, as long as your goal is to get that money to you.
$100 * 0.5 (for 50% income tax) * 2 (for 100% investment return) = $100 whichever order you do the multiplication.
>. International “startup” banks like Wise generally don’t support this, so don’t even try! You’ll lose multiple days going back and forth with their support, like I did. You can open a Wise bank account later when you’re properly incorporated.
The real optimization is not using Germany companies to begin with.
I'm a US citizen and US resident, I had some German limited partners in a small hedge fund several years back. The offshore feeder was in the Cayman Islands, alongside the Master Fund. Both had bank accounts only in US banks. (All forms with IRS and other regulators filed no problems there, good to have a business bank familiar with these things.)
Now to those particular investors, wiring money to a foreign bank with foreign transaction needs was too much for them. The US being a foreign bank from their perspective. They just wanted to use SEPA transactions and transaction instructions that they are familiar with, which are (potentially) instant.
This US citizen was able to sign up the Cayman Islands feeder into Wise for an EU bank account no problem, had SEPA details no problem. Makes it super easy to swap over to USD with few fees and wire it to the primary bank account.
Its also important to note that Wise has high transaction limits. Like $1,000,000 per transaction is the limit, its not a daily limit. so even if you get a large LP its not really a limit just multiple transactions. Not perfect, but way better than many other fintech app solutions for casual use.
Before Wise it was nearly impossible for an American to get real Eurozone banking easily after FATCA treaty was ratified. But with Wise it was pretty quick maybe 1 business day with support in their business sign up.
One point against Wise is that their Terms of Service are very restrictive. There are lots of legal activities you're not supposed to do with them.
The holding company doesn't have to be a German one
(and neither does the operating company, but you could follow this tutorial and have a holding company elsewhere)