Norton Rose Fulbright (LexBlog Germany)

German Federal Labour Court: The planned change of direction of the Sixth Senate In its decision of December 14, 2023 in case 6 AZR 157/22 (B), the Sixth Senate of the German Federal Labour Court, which is responsible for insolvency matters, announced that it would depart from existing case law pursuant to which a dismissal...

In our EMEA regulatory insights series colleagues from our EMEA offices provide an update on some of the key regulatory issues they are seeing in their local market. In this latest episode Michael Born from our Frankfurt office discusses recent German regulatory developments including the Financial Market Digitisation Act, the Credit Secondary Market Promotion Act,...

German employment law will introduce new legislation bringing numerous changes in 2024 that HR managers should be aware of. New legislation enters into force The factors for calculating the levels in the social insurance system were adjusted on 1 January 2024. You can find the current rates and limits here. The statutory minimum wage was...

German employment law will introduce numerous innovations and planned changes in 2023 that HR managers should be aware of. New legislation enters into force A number of new regulations have been in force since 1 January 2023. For example, employees with statutory health insurance will no longer have to submit a certificate of incapacity for...

On 25 November 2022, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published a report on administrative sanctions imposed under the Benchmarks Regulation in 2021. This is the first annual sanctions report pursuant to the Benchmarks Regulation published by ESMA, as this is the first time a Member State national competent authority (NCA) (Germany) imposed an...

Germany has become the latest country to agree on a plan to legalise recreational cannabis use among adults in a move that presents significant opportunities for investments in the EU’s largest economy. The Federal Cabinet has approved the key points paper for the legalisation, however a concrete draft law will only be presented once it...

Germany further broadens the scope of its new legislative regime for electronic securities: On 18 June 2022, the German Regulation on Crypto Fund Units (Verordnung über Krypto­fonds­an­teile – KryptoFAV; link) entered into force. The KryptoFAV introduces the possibility to issue units in common funds (Sonder­ver­mögen) via decentralised crypto securities registers which are typically based on...

The German government has announced that, in light of falling infection rates, the “SARS-CoV-2 Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance” will not be extended (press release dated May 24, 2022; see also our blog dated November 24, 2021). As a result, from May 26, 2022, no specific COVID-19 rules apply in the workplace. Employers are now...

Legal innovations Amended regulations apply to this year’s works council elections taking place from March 1 to May 31, 2022. Pursuant to Section 24 (2) of the Election Regulations of October 8, 2021 (BGBl. I 4640/2021), HR departments are required to provide, in addition to the typical employee data used to draw up the electoral...

The German Federal Social Court held that an area sales manager working from home was on his way to work and therefore suffered a workplace accident when he slipped down his spiral staircase and broke a thoracic vertebra while going from his bed directly to his computer.  It was important that he alleged that he...

In Germany the “Epidemic Situation of National Significance” ends on November 25, 2021.  As a result, the German legislature has amended several COVID-19 related laws, such as the German Infection Protection Act (Infektionsschutzgesetz – IfSG), in order to continue certain protective measures. The amended regulations (BT-Drs. 20/15 and BT-Drs. 20/78) aim to provide for a...

On 10 June 2021, the Electronic Securities Act (Gesetz über elektronische Wertpapiere – eWpG) came into force. With the introduction of the eWpG, Germany has further opened up its securities laws for digital securities and bearer bonds (Inhaberschuldverschreibungen) and certain fund units (Fondsanteile) may now be issued as electronic securities. When issuing such electronic securities,...

Germany’s highest civil court, the Federal Court Of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, the FCJ), has just published a decision specifying the scope of data subject access requests (DSARs). The FCJ held that Article 15 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has a broader scope than previously understood in Germany. Pursuant to the court’s decision, Article 15...

Declining infection figures and progress in the COVID-19 vaccination programme has prompted the German Federal Government to adapt the “SARS-CoV-2 Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance” (Corona-ArbSchV) (the Ordinance). The new regulations will come into force on July 1, 2021. The amendments to the Ordinance (see also blogs dated April 20, 2021 and January 27, 2021)...

Regularly agreed in employment contracts, exclusion clauses shorten the statutory limitation period for claims arising in the employment relationship and ensure certainty between employer and employee especially with regards to claims that are years old. In a remarkable decision the German Federal Labour Court (BAG, 26.11.2020 – ref. 8 AZR 58/20) has fundamentally changed the...

German Federal Labour Court dismissed employee’s claim On 27 April 2021, the German Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht, the Federal Court) held that employees cannot request their employer to provide them with copies of all (i) the employee’s entire email correspondence; and (ii) any emails mentioning the employee by name. The Federal Court said that under...

There has been a big bang in the data protection world in Berlin as the first and most spectacular GDPR fine in Germany has just been declared invalid. The Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection for Freedom of Information (Berliner Beauftragte für den Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit, “Berlin DPA”) issued a EUR 14.5 million fine against a...

Following the CJEU’s Schrems II ruling (case C-311/18 of July 16, 2020), transfers of personal data to the US are coming under close scrutiny by the German data protection authorities. Some German data protection authorities have announced that they will be taking a stricter approach against companies that fail to comply with the Schrems II...

On 16 February at 11am – 12pm CET our financial services team in Germany will be holding a webinar exploring the key implications of the end of the Brexit transition period for the payments sector in Germany. In this webinar, presented in English, we will examine what the Brexit trade deal means for the payment...

In Germany, employers are obliged to take all necessary measures, including those to protect against infection (such as offering working from home, increased hygiene protections, social distancing and behavior) and offering voluntary company vaccination programs, in order to protect the health and safety of the workers in the company and to fulfil their obligations under...

To combat and prevent the further spread of COVID-19 (the SARS-CoV-2-virus), the German government has issued a new “SARS-CoV-2 Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance” (Corona-ArbSchV) (the Ordinance) providing for additional and time-limited measures to reduce workplace-related personal contacts. These measures include the obligation for employers to offer their employees home working, unless...

Germany: As previously reported the German regulator (BaFin) has published its reaction to the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). The German regulator states that the provisions of the TCA will apply to financial services only to a limited extent and repeats that the UK service providers will no longer be able to use the European passports...

On 8 December 2020 at 9:30am to 10:30am (GMT) we are holding a webinar in English that will examine the BaFin’s proposed amendments to the “Minimum Requirements for Risk Management (Mindestanforderungen an das Risikomanagement, MaRisk)”, which, among other things, details outsourcing requirements in Germany. The webinar will also consider a new draft act that the...

On 1 October 2020, the State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit) of Hamburg (the DPA) imposed a fine of EUR 35.3 million under the GDPR against the German subsidiary of the fashion retailer H&M. The German subsidiary operates a central service centre in Nuremberg. The DPA found...

Facebook’s extensive collection of user-related data must be put on hold in Germany for the time being following a decision of Germany’s Federal Supreme Court on June 23, 2020. In summary proceedings, the Federal Supreme Court overturned an earlier order of the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf that – pending the outcome of an appeal...

Public life is slowly returning to normality in Germany as stores, restaurants and cafes begin to  reopen. However, a return to ”business as usual“ seems a long way off. Companies and employers need to consider different priorities and complex provisions when preparing the return to the workplace. In general, employers have a duty to take...

In an effort to fight the effects of the COVID-19 epidemic the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) is working on a bill to relax restrictions on working time in Germany. Specifically, longer working hours, shorter rest periods and the employment of workers on Sundays and public holidays for certain activities will temporarily...

Before the impact of Coronavirus/COVID-19 materialized and lead to a shut down of much of the public life in Germany, on 6 March 2020, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, BaFin) published its Circular 01/2020 (VA) on Minimum Requirements under Supervisory Law on the System of Governance of small Insurance Undertakings (Circular)....

After having taken initial steps to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the financial sector in Germany (see the related publication in our blog), the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – BaFin) has taken further relief measures. In order to give supervised entities a better overview of these measures,...

The rapid spread of COVID-19 within Europe and the beginning of the pandemic have led many of our clients to consider how employees and, if necessary, customers can be protected against any further spread of the infection and which employment law related measures should they be taking. We have summarised and answered the main questions...