News-Archive

Coronavirus is having a massive impact on many companies and businesses. Further questions are arising on almost a daily basis and the legislator is trying to support the economy. We would like to draw your attention to the current developments.

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On 13 March, Oppenhoff & Partner set up a Corona Task Force to bundle the relevant know-how in the current situation and to be able to efficiently handle the increasing number of client questions.

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On 16 March the Federal Government and representatives of the federal states agreed on guidelines to fight the corona epidemic. The guidelines provide for drastic restrictions on public life and closures of non-key sector establishments. The federal states and competent local authorities are expected to implement these guidelines in the short term, if they have not already done so.

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(Update: 18 March 2020)

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It is not that long ago that the German Federal Cartel Office [Bundeskartellamt, “BKA”] defeated Amazon Marketplace. Commercial traders can sell their goods directly to customers via the internet platform.

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On 20 September 2019, Federal Employment Minister Hubertus Heil presented a report on the results of his Dialogue for the Future "New Work. New Security." in Berlin. The report contains a multitude of proposals and declarations of intent for shaping tomorrow's work environment. These include the expansion of personal time accounts and state aid for time-outs for specific purposes, as well as the examination of an individual's legal entitlement to a personal long-term account. The introduction of an individual entitlement to mobile work is also going to be considered in cases not opposed by operational reasons. Whether, when and how such ideas will find their way into business reality cannot yet be foreseen. What is certain, however, is that they will substantially change work in future and that they will present employers with considerable organisational challenges. In this Newsletter, we report as always on current innovations in jurisprudence and legislation.

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This week the II. Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice [Bundesgerichtshof, BGH] responsible for legal disputes arising in the field of corporate law published a decision specifying the requirements for temporary workers to be counted in determining the threshold for the constitution of a co-determined supervisory board under the German Codetermination Act [Mitbestimmungsgesetz, MitbestG].

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In light of the ECJ’s ruling of today, we would like to draw your attention to current developments on the use of tracking cookies for analytics or marketing purposes on websites. We expect a considerable need for changes in practice, with significant consequences for online marketing.

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On 14 October 2019, the German Conference of independent federal and state data protection authorities (“DSK”) published their criteria for the calculation of data protection fines (English working translation). This paper, for the first time, allows a more accurate estimate of the range that fines can reach in individual cases. Especially with respect to large enterprises, the DSK concept provides for very high fines. The Berlin data protection authority has now put this concept into practice by imposing a fine of 14.5 million Euros against Deutsche Wohnen SE (English working translation of the press release).

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A year ago, it was only possible to speculate at this point about the considerable effects that the rulings of the European Court of Justice of November 2018 on the treatment of holiday claims could have on German holiday law. In fact, the year 2019 was marked by a large number of decisions by the German Federal Employment Court [Bundesarbeitsgericht, BAG] on recreational leave, in particular on the expiration, transferability, compensation and hereditability of holiday claims.

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