Growing power of the Länder

Date: 23/11/1995

By Thomas Klau

THEY might well claim to be Germany's true ambassadors.

The Federal Republic's complex structure as a highly-decentralised state of 80 million citizens split between 16 Länder is fully reflected in its lobbying presence in Brussels.

To the occasional dismay of Bonn's traditional diplomats, Germany's federal states have used the past decade to short-circuit the national embassy and set up an influential structure of 'Länder bureaux' or regional 'liaison offices' in the EU's capital.

The complexity of their task, says Folker Schreiber, head of the liaison office of Germany's mammoth Land of Northrhine-Westfalia, is impressive and growing.

First, the bureaux directly contribute to EU decision-making in policy areas such as research, education and police matters, where the German constitution explicitly gives Länder governments a strong voice or even a prerogative.

Secondly, the office staff - mostly civil servants detached from their regional ministries - spend much time chasing subsidies and generally defending their region's special interests in all economic matters. Thirdly, the bigger bureaux at least provide free, tailor-made information about what's going on in Brussels to regional companies which request it, a service for which UK or other competitors often have to enlist the expensive services of a specialised consultancy.

And, last but by no means least, the bureaux act as their Land's cultural and social embassy, staging exhibitions by regional artists and occasionally playing host to those on the Brussels cocktail party circuit.

All this, argue Schreiber and his colleagues, comes comparatively cheap. The offices of Germany's two biggest Länder, Northrhine-Westfalia and Bavaria (together home to 29 million Germans), each employ a staff of 18, at a cost which Schreiber puts at nearly one million ecu for his office alone. But he insists: “We easily earn what we cost.”

With the Hanse office leading the way in 1985 (it represents Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein and is the only one to be shared between two Länder), all of Germany's 15 states have now established a bureau in Brussels. The city state of Bremen, with less than 700,000 inhabitants, still keeps a staff of three. Together, the offices employ about 50 people, support staff included.

While they occasionally fight as fierce competitors, as they did famously in the 1993/94 case of the Ekostahl steel subsidies, where eastern Brandenburg's massive lobbying effort ran into all out opposition from West Germany's steel-producing Northrhine-Westfalia, the 14 regional offices systematically coordinate their efforts in social, environmental and transport matters. The aim, as one bureau official puts it, is to exchange information and avoid “undue pestering of the Commission's few German-speaking officials”.

Such internal liaising not only helps focus the German onslaught on harassed EU fonctionnaires, but also provides vital help to the still understaffed offices of Germany's poor eastern states, which lack the financial resources to set up a massive representation in an elegant Brussels maison de maître. Thus, the needs of impoverished Brandenburg's 2.6 million citizens are served by a meagre staff of five - hardly more than tiny Bremen's, as Egon Michels from the Brandenburg office points out.

While reluctant to go on the record with concrete examples, Germany's diplomats at the permanent mission to the EU are occasionally exasperated by the Länder's growing propensity to by-pass the Bonn government when they feel this serves their own narrow interests. And the necessity to involve up to 15 regional governments in the decision-making processes - a tendency reinforced by growing EU involvement in the Länder's traditional areas of competence - is cited as one of the key factors behind the lack of flexibility that Germany occasionally displays in some EU negotiations.

But episodic irritation is balanced by a growing awareness that the Länder offices in effect take a substantial load off overworked diplomats' shoulders. “Our direct partners in the permanent mission are often very happy to work with us,” says Schreiber. The Länder offices effectively shelter the German diplomats from the claims of countless small and middle-sized businesses which might otherwise turn directly to their national representatives.