Both. But the issue is more basic than just "what is the reform": it is "what is the problem".

Part of what the business press (and sadly ever more people trusting them) believes to be problems aren't (they aremis-interpretations of data, or even baseless myths having a life by way of endless repetition), or they are less significant. For another part, the reforms are either no solution or would cause other, greater problems elsewhere.

What connects these two cases of 'reforms' is that the Economist (and other such outlets) has an agenda, an economics ideology called 'neoliberalism', which now managed to be en vogue (is Zeitgeist), something in the elites "everyone knows to be true", but which nevertheless is no more real and no less blindly dogmatic that 'communism' was.

Why is Germany so reluctant to open its borders to Eastern Europeans? Is it because the country will be flooded by such workers (unlikely, according to me) or because the economy will not be able to handle (not being flexible) a small number of migration workers?

You assume too much rationalism behind this reluctance. There really is no more behind it than an (according to both you and me) irrational fear of being flooded by such workers, and a misguided notion that foreigners would take jobs away from locals (whereas in truth foreigners don't just increase the workforce, but the domestic consumer base too, balancing the net effect on the job market in the first order).

(BTW, the way you posed your question, it doesn't make sense: opening borders to job-seekers from the East would itself constitute the 'flexibilisation' needed to take up more migration workers, the elimination of labour laws in other fields would primarily affect - and is falsely preached as having a positive effect on - 'native' workers.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}