New Red Tape Relief Package Saves 600 Million

Germany’s government has taken another swing at its most famous export nobody wants: bureaucracy. On July 15, the cabinet met for its second Entlastungskabinett, a special session dedicated entirely to cutting administrative burdens, and adopted a red tape relief package worth around 600 million euros in annual savings for businesses, citizens and public administration. Together with the first relief session in November 2025, the government says it has now agreed more than 40 measures that reduce costs by roughly 10 billion euros a year. The new round touches everyday life more directly than most reform packages: health records, driving lessons, internet connections and building permits are all on the list.

What the red tape relief package contains

The July package bundles about ten measures from different ministries, coordinated by the new Digital Ministry under minister Karsten Wildberger. Alongside the headline projects, it includes smaller cuts that read like a catalogue of German administrative folklore: e-car drivers will no longer need an environmental badge, employment offices will offer video consultations, and health insurers and job agencies will finally share data instead of asking citizens for the same documents twice, a change the government values at over 900,000 saved working hours per year.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has framed the sessions as a running series rather than a one-off, with a further package announced for the end of the year. The Digital Ministry keeps a public list of adopted measures, and according to the trade paper Deutsche Handwerks Zeitung, Wildberger puts the total annual relief agreed since November 2025 at 10.4 billion euros.

Health records deliver the biggest single saving

The largest item by far is the planned health data law known as GeDIG, the bill for data use and digital innovation in healthcare, which the government values at around 445 million euros in annual relief. Its centrepiece is an expansion of the elektronische Patientenakte (ePA), the electronic patient record that public health insurers rolled out for everyone who did not opt out.

Under the bill, paper referral slips from family doctors to specialists are to be replaced by digital referrals, medication plans will be kept up to date digitally by doctors and pharmacies together, and clinics and practices will have to exchange findings and doctor’s letters through secure digital channels instead of fax and post. Patients should eventually be able to book appointments and run an initial symptom assessment through the ePA app. For how the system works today, see our guide to the German healthcare system.

Cheaper driving lessons, faster building permits

Two further projects aim squarely at household budgets. Driving school reform is meant to bring down the cost of getting a licence, which the government puts at around 3,400 euros on average. The compulsory classroom theory course will no longer require physical attendance; learners will be able to complete the theory part digitally, for example through an app, which should cut prices and scheduling headaches, especially outside big cities.

Housing and infrastructure get their own acceleration. A revision of the Building Code is intended to make planning and approval procedures for residential construction simpler and digital, and complete building applications are to count as approved if the authority does not respond within four months. A separate bill removes hurdles for expanding telecommunications and fibre optic networks, which matters to anyone who has waited months for a broadband connection in a new flat. The package builds on the coalition’s wider modernisation agenda, which we covered when the coalition reform package was agreed.

Praise for the tempo, doubts about delivery

Business groups welcome the direction of the red tape relief drive but question the pace. The chambers of industry and commerce association DIHK reacted coolly; its chief executive Helena Melnikov argued that companies are still gaining more new rules than they are losing old ones, a criticism t-online summarised as too much promised, too little implemented. German business estimates the total cost of bureaucracy at well over 100 billion euros a year, which makes even 10 billion euros in relief look like a first instalment.

Wildberger himself concedes the point in part, describing the effort as a long-term process rather than a finished job. The real test will be implementation: several of the measures, including GeDIG and the Building Code revision, are bills that still need to pass parliament before anyone saves a cent.

What the red tape relief means for expats

For internationals, the most tangible promises are the concrete ones. A digital theory course could make getting a German driving licence cheaper and easier to combine with a full-time job. Faster building approvals will not lower rents overnight, but anything that speeds up housing construction helps in a tight market. And digital referrals would spare patients the very German ritual of collecting a paper Überweisung before seeing a specialist.

The ePA expansion deserves one caveat: the record is opt-out, and as more data flows into it, it is worth checking your settings. Every insured person can restrict which doctors see which documents or object to the record entirely through their health insurer’s app. The red tape relief agenda is good news overall, but with health data, convenience and privacy need to be balanced by you, not just by the cabinet.