Germany: Minister for Economic Affairs wants to suspend the “ELENA” workers’ database

Excess work for SMEs. In spite of a great controversy (see our dispatch No. 100010), the “ELENA” database was launched on January 1st. since then, all businesses have to send, once a month, key information on their employees (amount of the salary, beginning and end of the labor contract…) to a central organization in Wurzburg, which answers to the German retirement insurance (Deutsche Rentenversicherung). This gigantic workers’ database had two goals: reduce administrative costs for businesses, notably SMEs, and facilitate the processing of requests for social benefits as of 2012. Indeed, every year, about 3 million employers have to provide nearly 60 million paper certificates to their employees so they can get social benefits. The ELENA database was supposed to put an end to this overload of work and paper. Yet, according to the Department for Economic Affairs, the opposite happened. Instead of reducing SMEs’ bureaucratic load, the system increased it. “Transferring data every month is, especially for SMEs, a disproportionate workload” the Ministry explained. It seems the system is only good for large businesses. Besides, implementing it is more expensive than anticipated for the public organizations. “We seriously need to think about a moratorium” the Minister told the Handelsblatt. A short while ago, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger also criticized the system, but on other grounds. The liberal Minister warned against possible abuses affecting the protection of employees’ data. Minister for Employment Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), also in charge of ELENA, is apparently the only one within the Merkel administration who doesn’t want to review the system.