Germany Mandates Day-One Sick Note, Scraps Covid Phone Rule
SkimNews Take
Reverting pandemic-era sick-note flexibility transfers verification burden onto a physician workforce already signaling capacity strain, meaning the friction cost of the policy likely lands on the healthcare system rather than on the workers it nominally targets.
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- Germany's coalition government agreed to require employees to present a doctor's note from day one of an illness, ending the current three-day grace period and abolishing phone-issued certificates introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) justified the shift by calling current sick-leave levels "exorbitant" and warning Germany could no longer afford the competitive disadvantage, with CDU parliamentary leader Jens Spahn citing a rate of roughly 18 sick days per employee per year — among the steepest in the EU.
- The KBV, Germany's national association of statutory health insurance physicians, called the plan "bordered on madness," warning that mildly ill workers — coughing or suffering gastrointestinal infections — would flood waiting rooms when they should be in bed.
- SPD co-leader and Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil publicly searched for "workable solutions," while Labour Minister Bärbel Bas (also SPD) said "That wasn't my proposal" and pledged to examine whether the day-one requirement would have any effect at all.
- The reform was bundled into sweeping tax, labour, and pension measures aimed at reviving Germany's economy, with Merz noting individual businesses remain free to agree to alternative arrangements with staff.
- Under existing rules, a certificate is required only from the fourth consecutive day of illness, though employers may request one sooner; the new policy eliminates that buffer entirely.
Why it matters: The reform directly affects every employed worker in Germany and could overwhelm general-practice clinics, since day-one certification for routine colds would redirect hundreds of thousands of mild cases into surgeries — and the SPD's public distancing (Bas: "That wasn't my proposal") signals the policy may not survive its own coalition intact.
