Germany is becoming expert at defeating itself

In “The Twelve Tasks of Asterix”, an animated film from 1976, one of the feats the diminutive Gaul must perform is to secure a government permit. To do so he must visit a vast office called The Place That Sends You Mad. In a recent open letter Wolfram Axthelm, the head of the German Wind Energy Association, likened modern Germany’s infuriating bureaucracy to Asterix’s challenge. A particular gripe was the 150-odd permits demanded by Autobahn GmbH, a state-owned firm that runs Germany’s vaunted motorways, for transporting outsize components of wind turbines, such as blades. Between byzantine rules on load dimensions, faulty software, perennial roadworks and a lack of personnel to process complaints, a backlog of some 20,000 applications has built up. A company that recently trucked a turbine from the port of Bremen to a site in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein found that although the distance is barely 100km (62 miles), road restrictions made the journey five times that long.Every country has bumbling officialdom. But Germany’s has an exceptional fondness for sabotaging itself. The cost of the battle between autobahns and windmills, for example, is not just economic but strategic. Last year’s abrupt halting of Russian fuel imports sent the country scrambling for power, preferably local and renewable. Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, says Germany needs to build three or four new wind turbines daily to reach its emissions-reduction targets. The current rate is just over one per day.