German Business Is Tangled in Red Tape. AI helps to untangle it

"When Markus Wingens created the position of “energy manager” for the metal heat-treatment company he runs in southwestern Germany, his idea was to increase energy efficiency and attract customers interested in sustainability.

But the job has become as much a task of filling out paperwork and studying seemingly ever-changing laws as it is ensuring that the firm, Technotherm Heat Treatment Group, is meeting energy requirements.

Last year, four new laws and 14 amendments to existing ones governing energy use took effect, each bringing fresh demands for data to be reported and forms to be submitted — in many cases to prove the same standards that the company has already been certified as reaching since 2012, Mr. Wingens said.

“We have the Renewable Energy Act, we have the Energy Efficiency Act, we have the Energy Financing Act, and each comes with an administrative burden,” he said. “It’s madness.”

Freedom from red tape has been a rallying cry for farmers from Poland to Portugal at recent protests against European Union laws and policies. Indeed, the burden of bureaucracy is a general complaint of corporate executives across the globe.

But nowhere is the issue more pressing than in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, which is facing anemic growth of no more than 0.2 percent this year. In a report last month, the International Monetary Fund called “too much red tape” one of the major impediments to reviving the German economy.

For example, it takes 120 days to obtain a business license in Germany — more than double the average in other Western economies. Germany also lags behind the rest of the European Union in the digitization of government services, still requiring written forms for certain tax refunds and building permits.

“We now have such a high workload that we need more and more people to master the bureaucracy,” said Claus Paal, president of the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who runs a packaging company.

“But these are qualified people who would actually be much better off in production than writing reports or filling out statistics,” he added.

German companies spend 64 million hours every year filling out forms to feed the country’s 375 official databases, according to industry estimates. When the Stuttgart chamber of commerce asked its 175,000 members to name their biggest challenges, red tape topped the list.

Even Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has publicly acknowledged that the demands have become too much. “We have reached a situation where, in many places, no one can carry out all of the laws that we have created,” Mr. Scholz said last month.

His government has proposed paperwork-reduction legislation that it claims would save companies and citizens an estimated 3 billion euros each year. Among other things, it would trim the time that companies must retain official documents by two years and end a requirement that Germans staying at hotels in the country complete registration forms.

The red tape drain on time and resources is felt especially by small and midsize firms — those with fewer than 500 employees and annual revenue below €50 million (about $54 million) — that are the backbone of the German economy.

These businesses often lack in-house legal departments dedicated to filing audits, recording statistics and deciphering which information is wanted by which authorities — the European, federal, state and local governments.

For Andreas Schweikardt, a general manager at Gebauer, a chain of seven upscale supermarkets in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, the bureaucracy burden generates menial tasks and increased food waste.

For example, deli workers would take cold cuts that were nearing their expiration dates and use them in sandwiches for quick sale, until a regulation that required detailed lists of all ingredients in all items sold took effect. Now, instead of making new sandwiches — and lists — every day based on what is about to expire, they have a more limited sandwich offering and throw away more meat.

At the seafood counter, fishmongers must now ensure that each variety of fish is labeled in both German and Latin. They also must take the temperature of every fish or fillet, as well as the overall temperature inside refrigerator cases, twice a day.

“At least there is an app where things can be logged, but it would make more sense if the thermometers of the refrigerators were calibrated to report the temperature directly,” Mr. Schweikardt said.

Even the digitization of government services is bogged down by bureaucracy, said Michael Wirkner, who founded an advertising agency in Göppingen nearly two decades ago.

To set up an online registration system for 20 school districts, his firm needed the approval of five regional data protection officers. Each had a separate interpretation of the European Union’s data security regulations; one told Mr. Wirkner that he could use a Google tool, while another insisted it was not allowed.

“So we end up spending time discussing things with hundreds of different people,” Mr. Wirkner said.

After Mr. Paal of the Stuttgart chamber realized how the onslaught of forms was bogging down businesses, his team invited members to send examples of their bureaucratic woes. The chamber asked for detailed information about what companies were being asked to report, from workers’ driving licenses to how they use energy and where they source it.

They have created a database of responses, along with the 60,000 pages of laws governing Baden-Württemberg. Using artificial intelligence, the chamber has created clusters of themes to help companies avoid filing duplicate information.

“With this tool, we can now search through all the laws and say, ‘Name me all the reporting requirements,’ and it comes up with a spreadsheet that lists all the laws that require a company to submit a report to an authority,” said Andreas Kiontke, a lawyer who works with the chamber of commerce.

The tool can also suggest ways to alleviate bureaucracy, which they hope German policymakers will take to heart.

“I think that in other countries, companies are not so concerned about some issues because they simply know that nobody cares that much,” Mr. Kiontke said. He noted that German regulators had imposed the European Union’s sweeping data privacy law on rules governing even professional etiquette. “In Germany, we have regulations about handing over business cards at business meetings and whether it’s still allowed,” he said.

“It’s unbelievable,” he added. “We’ve somehow lost the compass for what still makes sense.”" [1]

1. German Business Is Tangled in Red Tape. Eddy, Melissa.  New York Times (Online)New York Times Company. Apr 9, 2024.

 

Visi Vakaruose nori užgrobti Rusijos pinigus. Tai siaubinga idėja

„Respublikonų Atstovų Rūmų pirmininkas Mike'as Johnsonas suteikė vilties šviesą Ukrainos pastangų šalininkams. Kovo 31 d. jis pasiūlė „Fox News“ pabandyti suburti savo susiskaldžiusią partiją už vadinamojo REPO įstatymo. Įstatymai leistų prezidentui Bidenui, bendradarbiaujančiam su Europos sąjungininkais, konfiskuoti Vakaruose įšaldytas Rusijos valiutos atsargas ir panaudoti jas pagalbai Ukrainai.

 

     Patraukti šiuos rezervus būtų politiškai patogu. Nuo konflikto Ukrainoje pradžios 2022 m. vasario mėn. Jungtinės Valstijos ir jų sąjungininkės į konfliktą įmetė daugiau, nei ketvirtį trilijono dolerių, o galutinis poveikis buvo menkas. Ukraina pastaruoju metu patyrė virtinę pralaimėjimų mūšio lauke. Konflikto pratęsimas yra projektas, kurį visų politinių pažiūrų amerikiečiai vis mažiau nori finansuoti iš mokesčių.

 

     P. Johnsonas remia Ukrainos pastangas ir mano, kad jų palaikymas yra Amerikos vadovybės pareiga. Tačiau jo komanda, labiau atitinkanti respublikonų rinkėjų bazę, jį sulaikė. REPO įstatymas gali pasiūlyti ir ponui Johnsonui, ir ponui Bidenui būdą sušvelninti ginčus.

 

     Iki šiol idėja aprūpinti Ukrainą pagal išlaidų sąskaitą sukėlė panieką iš Kongreso respublikonų, kurie svarsto, ar amerikiečių mokesčiai nebūtų geriau išleisti JAV ir Meksikos sienai ginti. Priešingai, REPO įstatymas gali priversti „Rusiją apmokėti sąskaitą“, kaip teigia grupė Brukingso instituto mokslininkų. Pats ponas Johnsonas tai vadina „gryna poezija“. Tai viliojanti idėja.

 

     Bet tai yra blogai. Bet kurioje laisvoje šalyje yra konstitucinis atsargumas, neleidžiantis vyriausybei daryti bet ką be mokesčių. Mokesčiai ir atskaitomybė eina kartu. Retkarčiais, jei piliečiai nemoka už vyriausybės programą mokesčiais, jie už ją moka ne taip paprastai – pavyzdžiui, prisiimdami skolą arba leisdami atlikti nedidelį vyriausybės vaidmenį kokiai nors korporacijai ar kitiems privatiems interesams.

 

     REPO įstatymas kelia papildomą riziką. Jau pats Rusijos turto užgrobimas keltų pavojų JAV ekonomikai, nes kitos šalys, ne tik Rusija, vertintų tai kaip plėšikavimą. Tai gali susilpninti dolerio, kaip pagrindinės pasaulinės atsargų valiutos, statusą.

 

     Doleris yra, turbūt, pats vertingiausias strateginis JAV turtas. Mes kontroliuojame pasaulio ekonomiką, nes pasaulis prekybos tikslais leidžia savo sandoriams pereiti per mūsų valiutą. Tai palieka mums pigesnes sandorių išlaidas ir lengvesnę finansinę naštą. Tai suteikia mums laisvės didinti skolą (34 trilijonus dolerių iki šiol), laisvės, kurios trūksta kitoms šalims.

 

     Jei Rusija, Kinija ir kiti diplomatiniai konkurentai nuspręstų, kad jų turtas doleriais yra pažeidžiamas ir kad jie nebegali pasitikėti doleriu kaip mainų priemone, mes jaustume 34 trilijonų dolerių skolos skausmą taip, kaip dabar mes nejaučiame. Rezervinės valiutos pranašumų išsaugojimas priklauso nuo mūsų, kaip patikimo ir neutralaus kitų turto saugotojo, elgesio. Jei pradėsime vogti žmonių pinigus, tai gali pasikeisti.

 

     Konflikto pradžioje Rusija turėjo apie 600 mlrd. dolerių atsargų. Tai reiškia vertybinius popierius eurais, doleriais, Didžiosios Britanijos svarais, jenomis ir įvairiomis kitomis stabiliomis, konvertuojamomis valiutomis, kartu su auksu. Įprastu metu Rusija, kaip ir kitos šalys, laiko šias valiutas, kad palengvintų prekybą ir stabilizuotų savo valiutą. Maža dalis tų pinigų – keli milijardai dolerių – yra Jungtinėse Valstijose. Dauguma kalbų apie Rusijos turto areštą yra susiję su maždaug 300 mlrd. JAV dolerių, laikomų Europoje, didžiąją jų dalį depozitoriuje Belgijoje, vadinamą Euroclear.

 

     Nors europiečiai reguliuoja šiuos pinigus, nuo konflikto pradžios jie dažniausiai sekė Amerikos pavyzdžiu diplomatiniais ir strateginiais klausimais. Atskiros Europos šalys, visų pirma Vokietija, ragino būti atsargiems prieš kišdamos rankas į Rusijos atsargas, baimindamosi, kad toks žingsnis sukels pavojų paties euro, kaip (mažesnės) rezervinės valiutos, statusui. REPO įstatymas galėtų paskatinti juos veikti agresyviau.

 

     Europos Sąjunga pasiūlė kompromisą tarp pinigų palikimo ir visų jų konfiskavimo. Ji paprašė Euroclear atskirose sąskaitose laikyti pelną, gautą iš Rusijos turto. Tada šis pelnas galėtų būti apmokestintas dideliu tarifu, o pajamos būtų pervestos į Ukrainą – toks apskaitos manevras, tikimasi, atneš apie 3 mlrd. dolerių per metus.

 

     Kiti europiečiai pasiūlė neapgalvotesnį kelią. Jie teigia, kad Rusijos šimtai milijardų dolerių turėtų būti panaudoti, kaip užstatas didelei Vakarų paskolai Ukrainai, kuri turi būti grąžinta iš numatomų reparacijų, už kurias Europos Sąjunga galėtų pakeisti Ukrainą, kaip ieškovę.

 

    Šios diskusijos kyla dėl skirtumo tarp turto įšaldymo ir arešto. Pastaruosius kelis mėnesius Bidenas ir jo administracija ragino tiesiogiai konfiskuoti Rusijos rezervus ir panaudoti juos konfliktui prieš Rusiją finansuoti – žingsnis, kuris būtų jei ne visiškai precedento neturintis, tai bent radikalus. Buvo atsargų užšaldymas. Tiesą sakant, jis buvo paimtas tik drastiškomis aplinkybėmis, o tada tik ribotai.

 

     Jungtinės Valstijos įšaldė Irano turtą 1979 m. įkaitų krizės pradžios dienomis, tačiau dauguma jų buvo atšaldytos po dvejų metų. Įšaldytas turtas buvo panaudotas karo kompensacijoms sumokėti Kuveito aukoms per 1990 m. invaziją į Iraką, tačiau tai buvo numatyta pagal planą, kurį kitais metais patvirtino JT Saugumo Taryba. 2003 m. Jungtinės Valstijos iš Irako konfiskavo apie 1,7 milijardo dolerių, tačiau tai buvo karo įkarštyje. O pernai rugsėjį pats B. Bidenas grąžino Iranui kelis milijardus dolerių įšaldyto turto pagal susitarimą, pagal kurį buvo grąžinami ten įkalinti amerikiečiai. Užšaldymas paprastai nereiškia konfiskavimo.

 

     Tačiau viskas pradėjo keistis, kai 2021 m. vasarą netvarkingai išvesti amerikiečių kariai iš Afganistano. Po to Bideno administracija įšaldė šalies 7 mlrd. dolerių, kad kompensuoti rugsėjo 11-osios išpuolius. Nors tai, be abejo, buvo karo laikų priemonė, toks priepuolis buvo nereguliarus ir stebinantis. Nedaugelis į tai žiūrėjo, kaip į precedentą: Rusijos centrinis bankas Ukrainos įvykių išvakarėse neslėpė savo atsargų per priedangas ar kitas gudrybes. Atrodo, kad niekas nesvarstė galimybės, kad užsienio bankų institucija gali tiesiog paimti pinigus.

 

     Bidenas ir ponas Johnsonas skirtingais būdais pretenduoja į savo atitinkamų partijų moralinio lyderio mantiją. „Amerikos lyderystė yra tai, kas laiko pasaulį kartu“, – praėjusį rudenį sakė J. Bidenas, o pasitraukimas iš Ukrainos, jo teigimu, sukeltų pavojų šiai lyderystei. P. Johnsonas apkaltino Bideną „planuojant silpnumą“ jo užsienio politikoje ir pateikia alternatyvą.

 

     Didesnis rūpestis yra ne moralinis, o praktinis. Jei bus priimtas REPO įstatymas, valiutos konfiskavimas, kuris dabar laikomas paskutine priemone, gali virsti standartine veiklos procedūra, o tai pakenks Amerikai. Bet kuri užsienio vyriausybė, kuri galėtų supykdyti Amerikos balsavimo bloką – pirmiausia Kinija – pagalvotų, prieš pristatydama jos turtą į JAV arba į vieną iš JAV NATO sąjungininkių.

 

     Tai dar nėra tikimybė, bet tai yra galimybė, kurios nė vienas iš partijų politikas neturėtų pamiršti. Jau dešimtmečius Jungtinės Valstijos atideda sunkius sprendimus savo šalyje ir užsienyje, o partizaniškus prieštaravimus padengia dešimtimis trilijonų dolerių, kuriuos dėl mūsų palankios tarptautinės padėties mums leido pasiskolinti. Tačiau mūsų galimybės siaurėja. Jei ponas Johnsonas mano, kad Jungtinės Valstijos dabar „projektuoja silpnumą“, palaukite, kol jis pamatys tai be rezervinės valiutos." [1]

1. Everyone in the West Wants to Seize Russia’s Money. It’s a Terrible Idea.: Guest Essay. Caldwell, Christopher, New York Times (Online)

Everyone in the West Wants to Seize Russia’s Money. It’s a Terrible Idea

 

"The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, has brought a glimmer of hope to supporters of the Ukrainian effort. He suggested to Fox News on March 31 that he would try to rally his divided party behind the so-called REPO Act. That piece of legislation would allow President Biden, working with European allies, to seize Russian currency reserves frozen in the West and use them to aid Ukraine.

Grabbing these reserves would be politically convenient. Since start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and its allies have thrown more than a quarter-trillion dollars into the conflict, to little ultimate effect. Ukraine has lately suffered a string of battlefield defeats. Prolonging the conflict is a project that Americans of all political leanings have been steadily less willing to fund through taxes.

Mr. Johnson backs Ukraine’s effort, and sees supporting it as a responsibility of American leadership. But his caucus — more in tune with the Republican voter base — has stymied him. The REPO Act might offer both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden a way to duck controversy.

Thus far, the idea of supplying Ukraine through a spending bill has brought scorn from congressional Republicans who wonder whether Americans’ taxes wouldn’t be better spent on defending the U.S.-Mexico border. The REPO Act, by contrast, could make “Russia foot the bill,” as a group of Brookings Institution scholars puts it. Mr. Johnson himself calls it “pure poetry.” It is a tempting idea.

But it is a bad one. In any free country there is a constitutional wariness of allowing the government to do anything without levying taxes, for good reason. Taxes and accountability go together. Generally, if citizens aren’t paying for a government program through taxes, they are paying for it in some less straightforward way — by taking on debt, for instance, or permitting an outsize governmental role for some corporation or other private interest.

The REPO Act carries additional risks. The very act of seizing Russian assets would pose dangers to the U.S. economy, because other countries, not just Russia, would view it as an act of brigandage. This could weaken the dollar’s status as the main global reserve currency.

The dollar is probably the most valuable strategic asset the United States has. We exercise a degree of control over the world economy because the world, for trading purposes, allows its transactions to pass through our currency. This leaves us with cheaper transaction costs and lighter financial burdens. It gives us leeway to run up debt ($34 trillion of it so far) that other countries lack.

If Russia, China and other diplomatic rivals were to decide that their dollar assets were vulnerable and that they could no longer trust the dollar as a means of exchange, we would feel the pain of that $34 trillion in debt in a way that we don’t now. Retaining the advantages of a reserve currency depends on our behaving as a trustworthy and neutral custodian of others’ assets. If we start stealing people’s money, that could change.

At the start of the conflict, Russia had about $600 billion in reserves. That means securities denominated in euros, dollars, British pounds, yen and various other stable, convertible currencies, along with gold. In normal times, Russia, like other countries, holds those currencies to facilitate trade and stabilize its own currency. Little of that money — a few billion dollars — is in the United States. Most talk of seizing Russian assets concerns the roughly $300 billion held in Europe, the bulk of it at a depository in Belgium called Euroclear.

Although Europeans regulate this money, they have mostly followed America’s lead on diplomatic and strategic matters since the start of the conflict. Individual European countries, above all Germany, have urged caution before laying hands on Russia’s reserves, fearing that such a move would jeopardize the euro’s own status as a (lesser) reserve currency. The REPO Act could goad them to act more aggressively.

The European Union has proposed a compromise between leaving the money alone and seizing it all. It has asked Euroclear to hold in separate accounts the profits generated by its Russian assets. These profits could then be taxed at a high rate, and the proceeds delivered to Ukraine, an accounting maneuver expected to yield about $3 billion a year.

Other Europeans have proposed a more reckless course. They argue that Russia’s hundreds of billions of dollars should be used as collateral for a large Western loan to Ukraine, to be repaid out of anticipated reparations, for which the European Union could replace Ukraine as the claimant.

These debates come down to the difference between freezing assets and seizing them. For the last few months Mr. Biden and his administration have called for seizing the Russian reserves outright and using them to fund the conflict against Russia — a move that would be, if not entirely unprecedented, then at least radical. Freezing reserves happens. Actually seizing them has been done only in drastic circumstances, and then only in a limited way.

The United States froze Iranian assets in the opening days of the hostage crisis of 1979 — but most of these were unfrozen two years later. Frozen assets were used to pay war reparations to Kuwaiti victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion — but that was according to a plan approved by the U.N. Security Council the following year. The United States seized about $1.7 billion from Iraq in 2003 — but that was in the midst of war. And last September Mr. Biden himself returned a few billion dollars of frozen assets to Iran as part of a deal that saw the repatriation of Americans imprisoned there. Freezing has generally not meant seizing.

Things started changing, though, with the disorderly withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. In the aftermath, the Biden administration froze the country’s $7 billion in reserves, earmarking half of it for a compensation fund for the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Even though it was arguably a wartime measure, this kind of seizure was irregular and surprising. Few viewed it as a precedent: Russia’s central bank was not hiding its reserves through shell companies or other trickery on the eve of Ukraine events. No one seems to have considered the possibility that a foreign banking authority might simply take the money.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson, in their different ways, are each claiming the mantle of moral leadership for their respective parties. “American leadership is what holds the world together,” Mr. Biden said last fall, and walking away from Ukraine, he contends, would put that leadership at risk. Mr. Johnson has accused Mr. Biden of “projecting weakness” in his foreign policy, and is presenting an alternative.

The larger worry is not moral but practical. If the REPO Act is enacted, then currency seizures, now seen as a tool of last resort, might turn into standard operating procedure, to America’s detriment. Any foreign government liable to having an American voting bloc riled up against it — China, for starters — would think twice before parking its assets in the United States or with one of its NATO allies.

That is not yet a probability, but it is a possibility that no politician of either party should lose sight of. For decades now, the United States has been deferring hard decisions at home and abroad and papering over partisan divisions with the tens of trillions of dollars that our advantageous international position has allowed us to borrow. Our options, though, are narrowing. If Mr. Johnson thinks the United States is “projecting weakness” now, wait till he sees it without its reserve currency." [1]

1. Everyone in the West Wants to Seize Russia’s Money. It’s a Terrible Idea.: Guest Essay. Caldwell, Christopher, New York Times (Online)