On Legislative and Executive Control Logics – the Duty to In-Person Reporting in the German Employment Promotion System, 1927 to the Present

The article unravels the convoluted history of what may at first seem like a peripheral aspect of German labour promotion law, both past and present: the in-person reporting complex comprising the legal norm authorizing the Federal Employment Agency to issue summonses to in-person reporting appointments [Meldeaufforderung], the appointment itself, and the sanction provisions that penalize failures to comply [Meldeversäumnis]. The article’s aim is to explain the persistence of an ‘effectiveness fallacy’ – a variant of the is-ought dichotomy – arising from the implementation of the in-person reporting complex. The article sets out the multifaceted and incoherent legislative purposes of the in-person reporting complex throughout its history, tracing this incoherence back to the earliest drafts of the Labour Promotion Act, enacted in 1927. The reconstruction shows that, despite appearing marginal, the in-person reporting complex has always been a central instrument of unemployment administration and social disciplining. Finally, the article points to an aspect of the erosion of the rule of law in Germany – namely, the lack of judicial review of the legality of summonses to in-person reporting, which has persisted for at least thirty years.