Karsten Wildberger maps a quieter revolution in state modernization as Chancellor Friedrich Merz makes red‑tape cutting central to his economic reboot—while avoiding the chaos seen under the U.S. DOGE experiment.

BERLIN — Karsten Wildberger, the newly appointed head of Germany’s deregulation drive, wants to be judged by what quietly disappears rather than what loudly explodes. In early briefings and a first round of stakeholder meetings, he has drawn a contrast with the brash U.S. model that briefly put Elon Musk at the center of federal streamlining efforts: “Subtlety beats spectacle,” one aide summarized. The message aligns with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s bet that shrinking Germany’s thicket of rules—without shredding the safety net—can help lift a stagnant economy back to growth.

Wildberger’s elevation caps months of debate about how to modernize the state. Germany’s administrative maze—an archipelago of federal, state and local authorities bound by painstaking procedures—has long been blamed for hindering housing, energy and transport projects. From small‑business permits that take months to process to defense contracts slowed by multi‑layered compliance checks, red tape has become a macroeconomic variable. The new “deregulation czar” (the government’s term is coordinator for state modernization and digitization) inherits a mandate to simplify processes, push digital identity and procurement tools, and reduce compliance burdens on companies—especially Mittelstand manufacturers squeezed by high energy costs and weaker global demand.

Merz, who made regulatory relief a pillar of his campaign and early governing agenda, has framed the project as a competitiveness push rather than an ideological purge. The Chancellery’s talking points cite three objectives: cutting procedural steps, digitizing citizen‑state interactions, and shifting oversight from ex‑ante certification to ex‑post accountability. The quantitative targets are deliberately stark: billions in annual cost savings by the end of the legislative term; sharply shorter decision timelines for infrastructure and industrial permits; and a measurable reduction in paperwork that firms must submit to ministries and regulators.

A DIFFERENT STYLE FROM WASHINGTON

The comparison to the United States is unavoidable. In Washington, the Department of Government Efficiency—nicknamed “DOGE”—became a political lightning rod. For a moment, tech mogul Elon Musk’s proximity to the project signaled disruptive ambition; then came internal feuds, legal challenges and warnings from congressional overseers about weak guardrails around sensitive data. Supporters credited DOGE with elevating the urgency of modernizing procurement and data systems, but critics say it over‑promised savings and under‑delivered on governance. In Berlin, officials insist that Germany will absorb the lesson: central coordination can accelerate reform only if guardrails are clear, the legal basis is solid, and the communications are boring by design.

Wildberger’s playbook reflects a corporate operator’s instincts. A veteran of technology and consumer‑electronics companies, he talks in milestones and service‑level metrics—fewer forms, faster cycles, cleaner interfaces—rather than sweeping ideological claims. He has told allies that Germany’s problem is not the rule of law but the law of rules: too many, too prescriptive, rarely sunsetted, and too often written for paper rather than software. The solution, he argues, is not to “blow up” institutions but to re‑write rules in digital‑first terms and then enforce them consistently across the federation.

EARLY PRIORITIES

Three early initiatives define the opening phase. First, a “digital wallet” for citizens and companies designed to unify identity verification, licensing and filings, scrapping repetitive submissions across agencies. Second, a Procurement 2.0 program to standardize tenders nationwide, replacing incompatible portals and duplicative forms with an API‑based system that small suppliers can actually use. Third, a “one‑stop permit” experiment for strategic industries—batteries, hydrogen, defense—where a single lead authority coordinates all approvals within a fixed deadline, with other agencies bound to respond inside the window or lose their say.

None of this will be easy. Germany’s Basic Law, privacy rules, and the federal structure itself create real friction for centralization. Data‑sharing among authorities, even for benign goals like pre‑filling forms, remains politically and legally sensitive. Municipalities fear losing autonomy; public‑sector unions worry that digitization becomes a pretext for across‑the‑board job cuts rather than targeted reskilling. Business groups, meanwhile, want delivery rather than another strategy paper. Wildberger has reached out to Länder and mayors to co‑design standards instead of imposing them from Berlin—a recognition that success depends on local implementation.

ECONOMIC STAKES

The economic context is unforgiving. After a shallow recession and a fragile recovery, Germany’s growth engine is misfiring. Investment has lagged; energy‑intensive industries face cost pressures; and flagship automakers are navigating tariffs and a turbulent global EV market. The government argues that predictable, faster approvals and lower compliance costs could unlock private‑sector spending while public money focuses on defense and infrastructure backlogs. The hope is that red‑tape relief functions as a low‑cost stimulus: it doesn’t add to the deficit but aims to raise the economy’s speed limit by cutting the time and risk embedded in doing business.

SKEPTICS AND RISKS

Skeptics warn of two traps. One is mistaking dashboards for delivery—celebrating the number of rules repealed rather than the hours and euros actually saved by citizens and firms. The other is ignoring the politics of cuts. Even if overall public‑sector employment continues to grow in priority areas like cybersecurity and border management, reductions elsewhere will be felt. The coalition has promised that attrition and reskilling will carry most of the load, but line ministries are already lobbying for exemptions. The opposition will pounce on any service disruption to claim that “efficiency” is a code word for austerity.

Germany also must navigate Europe’s regulatory ecosystem. Brussels is moving on data‑sharing, AI, and critical‑infrastructure rules; member states that simplify at home cannot diverge from EU standards. Wildberger’s team says the aim is to interpret common rules in a more technology‑neutral way—specifying outcomes and transparency obligations rather than dictating the tools—so that compliance scales better and audits can be automated. That, they say, is the difference between a modernization push and a headline‑grabbing crackdown.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

If the effort works, the evidence will be prosaic. Citizens renewing a driver’s license or registering a move between cities will do so on a phone in minutes, with documents that auto‑populate from reliable sources. Small manufacturers will bid on public contracts without hiring consultants to translate legalese. A grid operator or railway company will receive a final permit in months, not years, with each step traceable in a public ledger. And ministries will publish open metrics—processing times, error rates, user satisfaction—so that rhetorical claims can be tested against experience.

For Wildberger, the political dividend of modesty may be credibility. If he avoids the U.S. drama—no celebrity briefings, no triumphalist deficit tallies, no public fights with agency heads—then the story becomes delivery. Germany’s modernization czar does not want to be the face of reform so much as its quietly effective product manager. The wager in the Chancellery is that a steady dismantling of friction, however unglamorous, is exactly what a patient, rules‑first country will reward.