The Union will restrict the possibilities of environmental protection associations to file complaints against infrastructure projects. “We are in favor of the abolition of association complaints in infrastructure projects” it says in an excerpt from the election program, reported by the news portal “T-Online” on Friday. To achieve this, they will push for a change at the European level.
In the short term, the Union will review where the implementation of the relevant directive goes beyond the necessary European regulatory framework. Wherever possible and sensible, a reduction of the appeals process to two instances will be pursued in the interest of faster legal certainty.
Furthermore, the CDU and CSU plan to cut staff in the public service. The number of federal agents will be reduced by 50 percent, and 10 percent of the positions in the ministerial administration and the Bundestag administration will be cut. “We want to do better work with fewer employees” it says in the paper.
In the future, the Union wants to make a “strategic and data-based policy.” “We will make digital execution the standard” it says in the program. CDU and CSU plan to have citizens and businesses submit their data only once in the future. There will be a basic register for companies and a unified company account. The responsibility for infrastructure, data policy, AI, platforms, and digital services, administration digitalization, and modern government action will be bundled in a digital ministry.
With a so-called “experiment clause” municipalities and counties will be able to try out things without bureaucracy, according to the Union’s plans. The decision-makers on the local level should have the security of being able to take quick and practical decisions, it says in the program. CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann had alluded to this in the past.
In concrete terms, this means that, for example, approval procedures could become obsolete if processes work without them. It’s essentially a test run for bureaucracy reduction. On the local level, they can try out what is necessary and what is not. What works will be rolled out, according to the Union’s plans. How such a rule will be implemented in a legally secure manner is not yet clear from the program.