Fax machines permeate Germany's business culture. But parliament is ditching them

The CeBit technology fair in Hanover, Germany, March 24, 1990, shows a portable fax machine that weighs 3 kilos and can be connected to any telephone via acoustic couplers.

But progress is on the horizon in the Bundestag — the lower house of parliament — where lawmakers have been instructed by the parliamentary budget committee to ditch their trusty fax machines by the end of June, and rely on email instead for official communication.Torsten Herbst, parliamentary whip of the pro-business Free Democrats, points out one fax machine after the other as he walks through the Bundestag.

Herbst says the fax machine's long-exalted legal position in Germany boils down to widespread distrust of anything that isn't written in pen and ink on actual paper. The result, he says, is excessive bureaucracy."We have a lot of procedures in Germany where you print out papers or you need a PDF file — and in the end it will be printed out, which makes no sense," Herbst says, shaking his head.

Alsleben says this obsession with red tape is the result of a risk-averse mindset among Germany's public servants.

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