Bureaucracy continues to burden Germany. The bureaucracy index developed by Professor Dr. Stefan Wagner from the University of Vienna, in collaboration with ESMT Berlin and the legal platform www.buzer.de, shows that the volume of federal legislation continues to rise and has reached a new all-time high.
In 2010, the body of federal law comprised 1,082 individual statutes totaling approximately 24,775 pages. By early 2025, that number had grown to 1,306 statutes and about 39,536 pages of legislation. This represents an increase in legislative volume of around 60 percent over 15 years. When compared to the previous year, the index has risen by another 2.5 percent, despite ongoing political pledges to reduce bureaucracy. Regulation in Germany is not decreasing; instead, it continues to grow.
A closer look at the four most extensive areas of law (as classified by the official citation system) reveals that the increase in bureaucracy since 2010 has been largely driven by disproportionate growth in financial regulation (+88 percent) and business law (+110 percent). In contrast, the expansion of administrative law (+54 percent) and social legislation (+46 percent) has been significantly slower.
Bureaucratic obstacles affect not only businesses but also individuals. Wagner cautions, “The current focus on federal legislation only tells part of the story. An even greater amount of bureaucracy can be found regulation implementation, state laws, and EU legislation. The true bureaucratic burden is therefore much higher.”
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