I would like to add what is, for me, an essential point. Our philosophy is not: everything that is technologically possible should be implemented and morally permissible. This principle must also be self-evident.
But it cannot be that products and production processes are increasingly caught up in an ever more impenetrable chaos of licensing procedures and compatibility tests.
Over the past forty years, we have accumulated a lot of baggage that is weighing us down on our path to the future. Among the many opportunities that accompany German unification, I perceive a great chance to carry out a kind of overall revision in order to streamline bureaucracy, simplify processes, and accelerate authorization procedures. I would like to remind anyone who is not willing to accept this sentence that the reconstruction of the 1950s could not have taken place with the sheer number of regulations we have today.
(applause by the CDU/CSU and the FDP—Wilhelm Schmidt of Salzgitter [SPD]: Then do it already!)
[ . . . ]
Source: Helmut Kohl, “Der Solidarpakt als Grundlage für die Sicherung des Standortes Deutschland” [“Chancellor Helmut Kohl on the Solidarity Pact as the Foundation for Securing Germany as a Location for Business and Industry”], Bundestagsprotokolle (March 25, 1993).
Translation: Allison Brown and GHDI staff
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