“The lobby is stronger than reason.” Anyone who has ever tried to ask for a carafe of water in a restaurant, and even sometimes in a German household, has experienced this unsettling feeling of visibly “insult personally” a stranger without really understanding why. And when the water comes, “when we receive it”She is “served in tiny glasses half of which seem to have already evaporated”. Die Zeit Magazin wonders about this Teutonic taboo, which is causing even the European Union to back down.
Hustle and bustle in Brussels
Indeed, while Germany generally welcomes bureaucracy more readily than other European countries, the 2019 vote in the Commission and Parliament on the directive “relating to the quality of water intended for human consumption” did not go without difficulty, remember Die Zeit.
“The European Commission had proposed that restaurateurs would in future serve tap water for free or for a small fee.” This was without taking into account the German catering union, Dehoga, which immediately stepped up to the plate. Faced with the outcry, the mandatory dimension of the directive is abandoned
