In 2024, employees of the two chambers of the German Parliament—the Bundestag and Bundesrat—recorded significantly higher sick leave rates than the national average. Statistics show that Bundesrat staff were absent for an average of 25.2 days, while their counterparts in the Bundestag averaged 22.3 days of absence.
By contrast, the nationwide average for all employees was 14.8 days.
Overall, the number of sick days has risen sharply nationwide; in 2020, the average was 10.9 days. Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz has sharply criticized this upward trend in recent years.
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) leader also questioned whether it was still appropriate to allow medical certificates to be issued by telephone. At his party’s conference in Stuttgart over the weekend, the CDU formally decided that the policy of issuing sick notes via telephone should be abolished.
However, Dirk Wiese—Parliamentary Secretary of the Social Democrats in the Bundestag—warned against what he called
placing patients under general suspicion.
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