France also seemed further along digitizing things.
Total duration is probably still a tie: it's all over the map but things can take ages in either country.
The Netherlands is great, except when it isn't. If you ever get stuck there, you have no chance convincing anyone. Their believe they have the best (civil) service doesn't help, but it turns out its all highly optimized for 'normal' Dutch citizens. As soon as your deviations from that norm start to add up, you're going to run into unhandled edge cases, which people won't handle (no protocol, and they are not used to using their own brain). "Computer says no" is Dutch (civil) service in a nutshell.
I remember not being able to create an account because the website password validation regex was buggy, I wrote an email about it and it's probably still not fixed. I've had to read the "compiled" js of the website to understand what was wrong to begin with.
I've had administrative processes slightly deviate from the happy path and getting stuck. When you talk to a human now. it's sorry can't do anything it's all online even when you explain that yes you tried other possible contact channels phone,email,in person, etc (email seems to go to /dev/null or get a canned response that clearly didn't read your message).
"Computer says no" is more and more of a thing now here in france. it's faster when you on the common happy path but if you aren't you better pray. Also the different services still seem unable to talk to each other even when they are in the same building / same administration but different department. Hopefully they'll improve that in 20 years.
Highly optimized for the happy path, which of course does cover 99% of cases, but you better not be in the 1% :) That's what I liked about France: nobody expects you to be normal, so everybody is used to working around systems. For the Dutch (and Germans), systems are sacred, and if they don't work, it must be you!
Edit:spelling and clarification on intake
Also if I remember at Tergooi MC you needed to register in their system anyways before an appointment. In the past they issued a little plastic card at the very same booth.
Inside the hospital itself you should be fine with an EU ID card or a passport, I don't think they specifically need a Dutch ID.
They're eficient at creating more bureaucracy as a universal solution to all problems.
Having dealt with Germany I have come to realize that excessive bureaucracy is basically a jobs program and a way for people to cover their ass whenever the shit hits the fan.
Something goes wrong and you're the big boss? Add more bureaucracy as your attempt to "fix" the problem and your justification to why your job is valuable to the company.
Something goes wrong on your watch? It's not your fault if you followed all the bureaucracy conjure by your bosses.
Never ever confuse Germans with the German government (except if you are looking for trouble :-) ). It is well-known that what are "lawyer jokes" in the USA are "politicians jokes" in Germany.
1. German companies are equally as bureaucratic because the people and society in general are culturally so into it.
2. German government is formed by German people voted by other German people, they aren't ruled by some aliens that came from of the sky, therefore are representative for them.
Fear of the boss to be caught with a error on his (hence he adds more bureaucracy), fear of the general public to look racist (hence low policing in high crime area with many foreigners), fear of the case worker to get sued (hence applying the rules literally, to the detriment of the applicant),.etc
This literally applies to big orgs as well with red tape, etc
The Administration is particularly bad. Most of the time, they're understaffed and digital infrastructure is completely lacking most of the places. Then, in many cases, there is also a ping-pong in terms of responsibilities. Sometimes your stuff is bouncing between different levels of administration (thank you federalism) and sometimes its between different departments. Its not unheard of that you have to provide the same data in different forms for the different departments working for the same agency.
The amount of time I have spend waiting in line to do something as simple as renewing my Perso (national ID) or requesting a passport. When I moved two years ago, I spent 4 hours waiting in line to sign a form stating that I moved here. Waiting for the passport was a similar waiting game (and that is as a German-born citizen, I can't begin to imagine how bad it is when you're also concerned with residency and visa stuff).
German companies love to complain about the bureaucracy of the government, but are effectively replicating that same bureaucracy without any need.
So no, most interactions aren't efficient unfortunately
Then again, anything like this is a stereotype.
Germans are (rather) efficient. The German bureacracy isn't. :-)
EDIT: But to give more evidence for my claim: violent attacks against government clerks are more and more increasing. I will just post two articles (in German), but it is easy to find many such articles:
> https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/attacken-auf-amtstrae...
> https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/heilbronn/a...
I know this sound stupid, but here's the reality: for the most part, those regulations aren't in place because people love bureacracy. They are there to enforce laws and implement measures that the people demand. They don't directly demand them, but whenever the government announces anything, people complain. They either complain that somebody is getting something they feel like they don't deserve, or they complain that they aren't getting something.
And because Germans love Bürgerbegehren and suing almost as much as they love complaining, everything has to be checked three times before anybody gets anything.
But all of this is just child play compared to how easy things are in China in terms of settle down (based on the experience of someone who has a job with a local company). I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways".
_I am tired of the pretentious western europe politics/administration point of view that immediately ranks everything (including good ideas) coming from Asia/global South as "not transposable to Europe" or just "not as good as our ways"._
Did you live in China as an immigrant, did you settle down there for several years, did you have to go through their immigration process ?
But you go ahead, state that the way other countries are doing things are irrelevant because of almighty statistics etc. (in absolute numbers, 0.07% of immigrants in China represents more people than the population of either France or Germany). You are not the first one stating this and it just feeds my narrative of people located in EU countries that are convinced that they have nothing to learn from anything that comes over the Atlantic, the Ural or the Mediterranean Sea, so nothing will ever improve nor be challenged.
Now even if I was completely wrong about this assessment (which I'm sure you think I am), it wouldn't make sense to presume that anyone would just take your word for it and allow themselves to be called pretentious when they disagree with you. That rude behavior is not increasing your credibility.
I sincerely hope that you'll get the opportunity to experiment with the immigration process in China which is straightforward and hope that people may overcome the initial reluctance to draw some of the lessons from a country that is far away and has a questionable political system. I am not saying that it is perfect, I am just stating that we have things to learn from it and that I believe it is sad to just overturn anything that comes from countries that are different.
I believe we can end this thread here as it seems that we will definitely not agree, but that's OK. Have a good day and sorry if my behavior appeared as rude to you.