In an interview with ‘Welt am Sonntag’, Papier argued that the German social state must be adapted to current realities and modestly reduced. He criticized the government’s delegation of essential political decisions to commissions, a practice he termed ‘Kommissionitis’, which he claims undermines democratic legitimacy and constitutes a failure of state leadership. Papier emphasized the necessity for decisive political guidance rather than a reliance on consensus-driven committee decisions.