A German bakery may call a loaf Vollkornbrot, whole-grain bread, only if at least 90 percent of its grain is whole grain. The rule is in the guidelines for bread and small baked goods of the Deutsches Lebensmittelbuch, the German Food Book. The guidelines are not law. The Bundestag’s research service describes them as having the character of objective expert opinions. They are written by a commission drawn in equal numbers from science, food inspection, consumers and the food industry.
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A Procedure for Better Ideas
In many German companies, an employee with a better way of working can submit it to the betriebliches Vorschlagswesen, the company suggestion scheme. Experts assess the idea, and a committee decides on it and on the bonus. The works council has a legal right of co-determination over the principles of the scheme, under § 87 of the Works Constitution Act. A study for the Hans Böckler Foundation dates the first such scheme to 1871, at the Krupp company.
Correct Procedure, Even for a Wrong Building
A building put up without the required permit is a Schwarzbau, a black building. The building authority can forbid its use and can demand that the owner apply for a permit. For that, the missing permit is enough. Tearing the building down is another matter. Under the Bavarian building code, for example, the authority may order removal only if lawful conditions cannot be restored in any other way. In German administrative law, that requires that the building also could not have been approved. A sound building that only skipped the procedure must go through it afterwards.
Procedural Errors That Do Not Count
German administrative law sets a limit on procedure. Under § 46 of the Administrative Procedure Act, a citizen cannot demand that a decision be set aside only because the authority broke rules of procedure, form or local jurisdiction, wenn offensichtlich ist, dass die Verletzung die Entscheidung in der Sache nicht beeinflusst hat, if it is obvious that the breach did not affect the decision on the matter.
The Online Access Act
The Onlinezugangsgesetz, the Online Access Act of 14 August 2017, required the federal and state governments to offer their administrative services online by the end of 2022 at the latest. More than 6,000 services were grouped into 575 packages. In August 2023, eight months after the deadline, 127 of the 575 were available across the whole country. In 2022, the Federal Court of Audit criticized the responsible ministry for having glossed over the progress in its reports. A second law, OZG 2.0, came into force on 24 July 2024. It set a new deadline. Services for business are now to be fully digital by 2028.
The Patient Record Nobody Asked For
From 1 January 2021, everyone with statutory health insurance could ask their insurer for an electronic patient record, the elektronische Patientenakte. By the end of June 2023, about one percent had one. The government then changed the default. A law with the name Gesetz zur Beschleunigung der Digitalisierung des Gesundheitswesens, the Act to Accelerate the Digitalization of Health Care, made the record automatic. Since 15 January 2025, every insured person receives one unless they object.
Riding in the Woods
Article 2 of the Basic Law grants freedom and states its limit in the same sentence: Jeder hat das Recht auf die freie Entfaltung seiner Persönlichkeit, soweit er nicht die Rechte anderer verletzt und nicht gegen die verfassungsmäßige Ordnung oder das Sittengesetz verstößt. (Everyone has the right to the free development of his personality, insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral law.) In 1989, the Federal Constitutional Court applied it to horseback riding. A law in North Rhine-Westphalia allowed riding in the forest only on field paths and bridle paths, but not on other forest paths. The court ruled that general freedom of action covers any human activity, riding in the woods included, and that any law in line with the constitution can limit it. One judge, Dieter Grimm, dissented. In his view, riding in the woods was not protected by this freedom at all.
The Sector Agreement Stays the Standard
In Germany, the rules of a collective agreement apply directly and are binding. A deviation is allowed only if the agreement itself permits it, or if it favors the employee. On 12 February 2004, the union IG Metall and the employers of the metal and electrical industry signed the Pforzheim Agreement. It allows a plant to depart for a limited time from the agreed standards, such as working hours or holiday pay, in order to save or create jobs. The conditions are strict. Only the parties to the collective agreement can agree on the deviation. The employer must prove that it is necessary. The employees receive defined benefits in return, and they can sue for them. IG Metall sums it up: Der Flächentarifvertrag bleibt der Standard, die Abweichung die Ausnahme. (The sector-wide agreement remains the standard, and the deviation the exception.)
The Framework Training Plan
A national training regulation for a recognized occupation must contain an Ausbildungsrahmenplan, a framework training plan, which sets out what an apprentice must learn and in roughly what order. Training regulations typically require each company to write its own training plan for each apprentice on this basis. They allow the company to change the order and the timing soweit betriebspraktische Besonderheiten die Abweichung erfordern, as far as the company’s practical circumstances require it.
In Their Own Responsibility
The school law of North Rhine-Westphalia describes the teacher’s freedom and its frame in one sentence. Teachers teach, educate, advise, assess and supervise their students in eigener Verantwortung, on their own responsibility, im Rahmen, within the framework, of the educational goals, the applicable laws and regulations, the orders of the school authorities and the decisions of the school’s conferences. In Hesse, the principal may intervene in the teaching of a fully trained teacher only when a rule has been broken. After the shock of the first PISA study in 2000, the states committed to applying national educational standards from the 2004–05 school year. The standards fix what students must be able to do at the end. They are meant to give schools and teachers greater freedom in choosing and arranging the content.