Our reports in a few minutes. Every video belongs to a report; that is where all the figures, sources and framing are.
OPINIONVIDEO
State spending is once again reaching a good half of economic output, and 5.475 million people work in the public service – not counting the employees of Deutsche Bahn AG, who do not appear in these statistics. Andreas W. Herb sums up the debate in thirty slides.
OPINIONVIDEO
Not less Europe, but less German extra bureaucracy: in a good six minutes Andreas W. Herb shows five cases in which Germany sets stricter obligations than the EU, and proposes a test for every extra burden.
OPINIONVIDEO
The customs act is meant to relieve honest companies. Using the case of a lorry load of vodka mixers, Andreas W. Herb shows in a good five minutes what is missing from it: 0 euros of alcohol duty, but 57,942 euros of alcopop duty on the same goods.
OPINIONANALYSIS
The EU today spends more than two and a half times as much as in 2000, and its administration costs almost 14 billion euros a year. For translation into 24 languages it has been giving the same estimate of around one billion euros for years – and there is no quantified savings requirement.
OPINIONOPEN LETTER
The EU packaging regulation has applied since August, right down to the bread roll bag. In an open letter Andreas W. Herb calls on Federal Chancellor Merz to stop the obligations for bakers, butchers, publicans and traders in Brussels, with 20 examples from everyday life.
OPINIONCOMMENTARY
Sugar, alcohol, plastic: three planned excise duties would bring in around 2.9 billion euros a year from 2028 and over 1,000 new posts in the federal administration. If passed on in full, that is around 70 euros per household per year.
OPINIONPOSITION PAPER
Over 14 billion low-value consignments entered the EU duty-free from 2022 to 2025, most of them from China. Temu and Shein alone cost Germany 2.4 billion euros of value added and around 40,000 jobs, according to an IW study. A position paper to the chancellor ahead of the EU summit.
BACKGROUND
Anyone talking about the cost of Bürgergeld first has to clarify what is being counted. The calculation presented here makes the items visible – and shows why not every figure can be added up into a single total.