A ferocious row has erupted in Germany after the coalition government announced that workers must provide a doctor's note on the very first day they call in sick – a move a leading doctors' group said “borders on madness”.
The changes, proposed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, will also scrap the ability to obtain the note by phone, a measure brought in during the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently, a certificate is only required if an employee is unfit for work for more than three days, although employers can request one earlier.
“Germany's plan to require a doctor's note on first sick day is condemned by medics as 'madness'.”
“The number of sick days in Germany is too high,” Merz said, defending the plan agreed by his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and coalition partner the Social Democrats (SPD). “We can no longer afford this competitive disadvantage caused by long periods of absence from work.”
But the KBV, the national association representing statutory health insurance physicians, reacted with fury. In a statement it said forcing thousands of people to visit surgeries simply to fill in forms “bordered on madness”. “Anyone who is coughing or has a gastrointestinal infection belongs in bed – not in an overcrowded surgery,” it said.
The Association of General Practitioners warned that infection cases requiring only one or two days in bed would flood waiting rooms. “Our practices would be flooded with patients who don’t need in-person care and would be better off in bed,” the German Association of Family Physicians said in a separate statement.
Even within the government, there were signs of unease. Labour Minister Bärbel Bas, from the SPD, said she would investigate the requirement. “That wasn’t my proposal,” she told RTL TV. “We will look into whether this actually has any effect at all, or whether it is more likely to cause difficulties.” Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil, also SPD, said he was searching for “workable solutions”.
But Jens Spahn, leader of the CDU’s parliamentary group, defended the plans, pointing to Germany’s sick-leave rate as among the steepest in the EU. “We have one of the highest numbers of sick days – around 18 per year per employee,” he said.
Frank Werneke, head of the services sector union Verdi, accused Merz of creating “a culture of distrust of employees”. Merz, meanwhile, insisted the government was “returning to the arrangements we had before the coronavirus pandemic” and said it was “up to individual businesses to agree on other arrangements”.
With doctors’ groups and unions united in opposition and senior SPD figures calling for caution, the chancellor faces a battle to push through a policy he says is essential to ending Germany’s “competitive disadvantage” – but which critics warn will only fill surgeries with the genuinely ill.