Germany bans phone-in sick notes: workers must see a doctor on day one

German employees will be required to visit a doctor in person and obtain a sick note on the first day of illness, under tough new rules unveiled by Chancellor Friedrich Merz as part of a sweeping package to revive the country’s stagnant economy.

The measure scraps the current system, under which workers could secure a certificate over the phone and did not need one at all until their third day off. It is a marked contrast with Britain, where employees can self-certify for a full seven days before a fit note is required.

“The number of sick days is too high,” Merz told journalists. “We are creating a set of tools that will enable those involved, both employees and companies, to correct this. We know this is a tough decision. But we can no longer afford the competitive disadvantage caused by prolonged absences from work.”

Germans take an average of roughly 15 working days of sick leave a year, according to figures from the Federal Statistical Office, lower than France and most Nordic countries but well above Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Italy. By comparison, the latest Office for National Statistics data shows around 149 million working days were lost to sickness or injury in the UK last year, some 2 per cent of all working hours, or just over four days per worker. British absence rates have nonetheless been climbing, with UK sick days recently hitting a 15-year high, driven in large part by mental health conditions.

While employers’ groups welcomed the German move, it has infuriated the country’s powerful trade unions. Frank Werneke, head of the services union Verdi, accused Merz of fostering “a culture of distrust of employees”.

Doctors are equally unimpressed, warning the requirement will overwhelm general practice with appointments that serve no clinical purpose. “Our practices would be flooded with patients who don’t need in-person care and would be better off in bed,” said the German Association of Family Physicians, which branded the measure “an absolute catastrophe”.

The sick note crackdown forms part of a broader reform programme negotiated between Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union and its coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats. Alongside a promised bonfire of red tape, the retirement age could rise gradually from 67 to as high as 70 in the coming decades, while tax cuts for lower and middle earners will be funded by higher rates on incomes above €250,000 (£215,000).

For UK business owners watching from across the Channel, the episode is a reminder that absence management remains a live policy battleground, and that handling staff sickness fairly and lawfully is as much about trust and process as it is about cost. It also underlines how seriously Germany’s slowdown is being taken in Berlin: sluggish growth in Europe’s largest economy is one of the factors expected to shape the continent’s economic pecking order through 2040.

Carsten Brzeski, an economist at Dutch bank ING, said the reforms were overdue but should not be oversold. “It may have taken longer than many hoped, but Germany’s long-awaited summer of reforms has finally arrived,” he said. “It is not a package that will morph a stagnating economy into a booming economy overnight. But it is a package that could create the preconditions, the framework, for future growth.”

Amy Ingham

Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.