Employees in medium -sized companies spend an average of around seven percent of their working hours with bureaucratic processes. This corresponds to an average of 32 hours a month per company – or a total of 1.5 billion working hours a year. This is shown by the representative “Mittelstandspanel” of the state sponsoring bank KfW among around 10,000 small and medium -sized companies from all industries. The “Spiegel” had previously reported on the study.
According to the survey, it costs a total of around 61 billion euros a year to implement all requirements. Regular procedures are an essential basis for the economic system, said KfW Mittelstands expert Michael Schwarz. “With increasing bureaucracy, however, the risk that costs will exceed the benefits.” From the perspective of medium -sized companies, the reduction of bureaucracy is currently the most pressing economic policy issue.
There are no contexts of the survey that cannot be measured or can hardly be measured in working hours- such as lengthy planning and approval procedures, poor enablability or the controversial interpretation of regulations. “However, many companies play a major role in dealing with bureaucracy,” said Schwarz. From the perspective of medium -sized companies, bureaucracy is by far the greatest risk of competitiveness.
Building and solo residents are particularly affected
The construction industry uses a particularly large amount of working hours for bureaucratic processes. Solo -volatile people are also severely affected. In general, the bureaucracy was sinked with increasing company size.
The probably future government of the Union and SPD promises a broad -based reduction in bureaucracy and wants to modernize government decisions, processes and structures. However, the reduction in bureaucracy had already made earlier governments – with little success.
High bureaucracy is always complained about as a huge burden by the economy. According to a survey by the IFO Institute in late 2024, German companies spend an average of around 6 percent of their sales for bureaucracy costs.
