(Adnkronos) –
Only 17% of German citizens believe that the state is able to fulfill its obligations, according to the latest survey commissioned by the Federation of Civil Servants (Dbb, Deutscher Beamtenbund und Tarifunion), Germany’s largest public sector union. In previous years, this percentage stood at 23%, 25%, and 27%.
According to the survey, conducted by the Forsa Institute, 79% of German citizens believe that the state is overwhelmed by the enormous amount of problems it faces. Public employees themselves expressed slightly more confidence in the state’s ability to intervene, at 36%.
The data also varies based on political affiliation: supporters of the Cdu/Csu (38%), Spd (33%), and the Greens (26%) showed greater trust in the state. Trust is lower among supporters of the Left (14%) and, especially, the AfD (2%).
The president of the Dbb, Volker Geyer, called the results “a catastrophe and a wake-up call.” For the union leader, all of this “is extremely alarming. It cannot and must not continue. Such a loss of trust represents a danger to our democracy.” When asked about specific areas, fewer citizens perceived the state as overloaded. In one area, trust even increased significantly: regarding asylum and refugee policies, only 16% believed the state was overloaded (in 2025 it was 30%).
26% perceive the state as overloaded in the areas of social security and pension systems, and 18% in taxation and finance. Only 2% found this overload in childcare, 6% in defense, and 10% in infrastructure.
It emerged that public sector employees still enjoy high trust from citizens, while respondents attribute the blame for the decline in trust mainly to politicians, not to public employees, as reported by Deutsche Welle. Geyer warned that the results represent a worrying signal for the government led by Friedrich Merz.
