Given that this kind of thing seems to be widely reported, are there any significant efforts to reduce the friction all this causes?

Pretty much all political parties loudly announce that they'll reduce bureaucracy, but, judging by the outcomes, not much has happened so far.

That being said, it's probably overly simplistic to blame political parties for this - there's a lot of e.g. county/state-level bureaucracy in Germany which gets in the way of making any sort of constructive changes. It's a bit like blaming the CEO of a bloated company for not making it "agile" in a short period of time. Sure, leadership is important, but the reality is, it's.. complicated.

> Pretty much all political parties loudly announce that they'll reduce bureaucracy, but, judging by the outcomes, not much has happened so far.

I do not believe that this will be possible in our lifetimes. Germany cannot function without a very high degree of bureaucracy. It's like asking fish to breathe out of water.