Overview
- The government approved eight immediate steps and outlined roughly 50 further items intended to be cabinet‑ready by mid‑2026 under its Entlastungskabinett push.
- Near‑term, the ready draft laws are estimated to save just over €100 million, while the broader agenda is presented by ministers as yielding relief worth several billion euros.
- Concrete changes include scrapping mandatory continuing education for property managers and brokers, abolishing the heating label, enabling fully digital property‑purchase notarisation and exchanges, and laying the legal groundwork for a mobile driving licence targeted for end‑2026.
- Planned reforms also cover a digital Work‑and‑Stay portal for foreign skilled‑worker procedures, use of AI in migration processing, easing certain building standards, relaxing safety‑officer requirements for smaller firms, and dropping the environmental sticker for eligible EVs.
- Business groups welcomed the direction, but unions and the Beamtenbund cautioned against weakened protections, and a ZDF Politbarometer finds only 38% see the government contributing meaningfully to solving problems, with CDU/CSU and AfD level at 26% in voting intention.