Politics of bilocation: back and forth between Bonn and Berlin

Last week, Germany's federal environment minister Barbara Hendricks flew 480km from Berlin to Bonn to present a report. Then she turned on her heel and flew 480km back to present the same report in Berlin, arriving late because of fog.

To the untrained eye this might seem like a waste of time, effort and money. For Germany’s federal ministers and their staff, it’s just another day at the office.

Hendricks's back-and-forth was a fitting tribute to the contents of her report: an idiosyncrasy of Germany politics that costs the taxpayer €7.5 million annually. Its name: the Berlin-Bonn Law.

A quarter of a century ago Bundestag MPs, then in Bonn, voted narrowly to shift the united Germany's capital and seat of government away from the banks of the Rhine, its home since 1949, and back to Berlin, city of the Kaisers, the Nazis and the wall.

Many western German MPs – not to mention civil servant with houses, children and lives in the western Rhineland – feared that Bonn, immortalised by John Le Carré as “a small town in Germany”, would, post-move, be even smaller again.

Bitter pill

The move happened anyway. But, to sugar-coat the bitter pill, a law was later agreed giving Bonn a few consolation prizes: jobs from new headquarters of semi-state companies and UN agencies, as well as half of all government ministries and half of federal government staff. Today, Bonn has 2,000 more jobs than it did before the move.

But the Berlin-Bonn agreement has failed to prevent a “Berlin drift” gathering pace in recent years. Instead of the promised 50:50 split of the federal government’s ministries and 25,000 staff, bout two-thirds of civil servants are now based in Berlin with about one-third in Bonn.

If you are an ambitious politician with a profile to build, a state secretary on the make or a young civil servant seeking action, you want to be in Berlin – not Bonn.

Which is why environment minister Barbara Hendricks commissioned a report to find out how bilocation is working. The sobering answer: just about.

The report said that all government tasks are “completed completely and on time” which, translating the civil servant prose, means things are just about holding together. What’s more, the report adds, holding things together comes at “considerable extra effort and to the detriment of efficiency”.

Besides costing €7.5 million annually, having two seats of government results in more than 20,000 work trips – by plane – between the two cities annually, with a considerable environmental impact.

For Germany's Taxpayer's Federation (BdS), a lobby group that watches government spending, the bilocation is an "expensive luxury" that should be ended. "Government work needs one location and that is Berlin," said Reiner Holznagel, BdS president.

Berlin drift

But MPs from the old capital region, with an eye on their constituents, beg to differ. Norbert Röttgen, an ally of chancellor Angela Merkel and MP for Königswinter, near Bonn, says the bilocation arrangement has worked but will eventually fail if the "Berlin drift" isn't halted.

“The report also fails to look at how a complete move would cost many times what the division of work costs,” he argues, hitting the Achilles’ heel of the pro-Berlin camp.

While some Berliners feel aggrieved at sharing federal government with Bonn, the German capital is growing by 40,000 people annually. Average rents have jumped 25 per cent in the last five years, a housing crisis that could be compounded by an influx of Bonn civil servants.

So how long can the bilocation status quo prevail? Longer than you might think.

The report makes no recommendations, but points out that Bonn civil servants are, on average, five years older than their Berlin colleagues. Three qua-ters will have retired in the next 20 years. Evolution, not revolution, seems to be on the cards.

Just as Germany shunned Thatcher-era shock treatment for its mining industry in favour of a slow wind-down, federal politics in Bonn will most likely be quietly let expire rather have the plug pulled.

So which will end first: the European Parliament’s own Brussels-Strasbourg roadshow, or Bonn-Berlin-and-back bilocation? Place your bets now.