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===Germany===
{{main|Parliamentary State Secretary}}
The German ''Staatssekretär'' is a ''[[Beamter]]'' (civil servant) who is second only to the minister in a state or federal ministry, so the position is equivalent to that of [[Permanent secretary]] in the United Kingdom, not [[Secretary of State (United Kingdom)|Secretary of State]]. While officially it is not a political office, often it is assigned by appointment based on political criteria such as party affiliation<ref>Tobias Bach, Sylvia Veit, The Determinants of Promotion to High Public Office in Germany: Partisan Loyalty, Political Craft, or Managerial Competencies?, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2018, Pages 254–269, https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mux041</ref>, rather than by career progression as a civil servant. Nevertheless, they are the administrative head of the ministry. They depend on the full confidence of their minister and can at any time be posted into provisional retirement with their pension paid in full. This happens usually when the government or the minister changes. De facto such a provisional retirement is lifelong.
A special case is the [[Parliamentary State Secretary]] (''{{lang|de|Parlamentarischer Staatssekretär}}''), which is a member of parliament who is appointed to a ministry as a ''Staatssekretär''; in the [[Foreign Office (Germany)|German Foreign Office]] and the [[German Chancellery]] the official title is ''Staatsminister'' ([[Minister of State]]). Such posts, which were intended to improve the connection between a ministry and the parliament, have recently become subject of some controversy. Critics claim that parliamentary secretaries of state are usually given little to no influence and responsibility within their ministry. All the while they are paid very generously due to receiving two salaries, both as secretary of state and as member of parliament. For example, when interviewed about his post as a parliamentary minister of state in the German Foreign Office during an [[German Visa Affair 2005|investigation into visa abuse]], [[Ludger Volmer]] claimed that he had been cut off from the workflow within the ministry, and called the ''Staatsminister'' office an "''Unding''" (absurdity).
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