Registration and de-registration
Individuals and businesses wishing to be added to the Representative Actions Register can apply using the online form provided by the Federal Office of Justice. To make registration easier, a separate registration form is made available for every representative action (model actions (also referred to as “model declaratory actions”) and claims for redress), which already contains the details of the court, the file number of the proceedings, and the party the action is being brought against. The online registration forms and all of the information you need about the representative action can be found in “Official Announcements in the Register of Representative Actions”/“Öffentliche Bekanntmachungen im Verbandsklageregister”. The form can also be requested by post by writing to the Federal Office of Justice at Bundesamt für Justiz, Klageregister, 53094 Bonn, Germany.
You will only be added to the register of representative actions if you fill in all the required fields of the registration form. The Federal Office of Justice provides a detailed guide to filling in the form. Claims can be added to the Register of Representative Actions for a period of up to three weeks after the end of the oral hearing in the relevant proceedings. Small businesses can only register for an action if the proceedings became pending from 13 October 2023 onwards. Small businesses are defined as those with a staff of 10 or less and whose annual turnover or balance does not exceed 2 million euros. Whether an application meets the criteria or not is decided upon by the circumstances on the day on which the application was made.
It is also possible to de-register. De-registration can take place in a period of up to three weeks after the end of oral hearings in the relevant proceedings. It is possible to make changes to the subject of and reason for the claim or the legal relationship until such time as the register is closed.
The details in the register relating to the address, name, and, in the case of businesses, of the company directors, can be changed at any time. The addition of, change to, or withdrawal of a named representative and of information about legal succession can also occur at any time. The Federal Office of Justice also provides forms for these purposes.
The time limit for registration and de-registration depends on when the oral hearing is completed by the competent court. A final deadline is only set once a court decision has been issued. This means that there is a time period in which it is not possible to determine whether the time limit for registration or de-registration has elapsed. This period begins once three weeks has elapsed since the court set a date for the pronouncement of a decision. It ends with the issuance of a court decision. Any consumers and small businesses sending their registration in this period receive written notice of this from the Federal Office of Justice. The registration is checked upon issuance of the court decision, and if it is found to be correct in terms of form and to have been submitted in good time, an entry is added to the register. In such a case, the Federal Office of Justice will send a confirmation of registration. The Federal Office of Justice will send a notification of non-registration if it is apparent that the registration was not correct in terms of form or was not submitted in due time.
Further process
The court proceedings and the fulfilment of entitlements of a party registered for an action is dependent on whether the action in question is a model action or a claim for redress.
Procedure in claims for redress
The proceedings in claims for redress generally have a number of stages. In the event that the court is satisfied that a businessperson is, on merit, to be held liable, it will issue a basic redress judgment. This basic redress judgment will also set out the specific conditions determining the entitlements of the parties concerned. Such a specific condition may be that the parties concerned have purchased a certain product from the company in question. The court shall also determine which evidence must be provided by the individual injured parties to prove that they meet the criteria for entitlement as set out by the court. Such evidence may take the form, for example, of a boarding pass, a savings agreement, or an invoice for the purchase of a particular product.
Once the basic redress judgment has been issued, both the claimant and the defendant shall have the option of ending the proceedings in a settlement. If no such legally-effective settlement can be reached between the parties, the court shall make a final judgment to end the redress litigation. If it is apparent from the outset that such a settlement is beyond the realms of possibility, the court can, on application of one or both of the parties, issue a final redress judgment without a basic judgment.
As part of the final judgment, the court orders an implementation procedure. Such implementation procedures serve to fulfil the entitlements of the consumers and small businesses concerned that were party to the redress proceedings. A court appointed trustee is responsible for the implementation procedure. The trustee first checks to see whether the claims made by individual claimants are justified. Where this is the case and the entitlement has been assigned a monetary value, he or she shall arrange payment. In the case of other forms of entitlement, the business being claimed against is given an appropriate time period in which to satisfy the entitlements. If the trustee rejects the claim in full or in part, parties entered in the register are able to lodge an appeal against the decision. If the claim is once again rejected (at least in part), a court decision on the appeal can be applied for at the court competent for redress proceedings. The time limit for the appeal shall be two weeks from the decision having been issued. A pre-condition for this is that the person registered suffers some disadvantage as a result of the appeal. The court will then review the correctness of the trustee’s decision. Following on from the implementation procedure, those registered can bring an individual action before a court if the trustee has rejected the fulfilment of the claim in whole or in part, or if the claim was not fulfilled by the end of the implementation procedure. However, this only applies if it was not and would not have been possible to make the claim during the appeal proceedings.
Procedure in model actions
Because model actions do not – in contrast to claims for redress – concern the (non-)performance arising from a contract, those registered must, once a model judgment has been issued, make their own individual claim against the business. Further on in the procedure, any court called upon to decide on the dispute between the registered party and the businessperson subject to the claim shall be bound by the results of the model action.
Once final and binding effect has set in
Once the representative action proceedings (concerning a regress claim or model action) has gained final and binding effect, e.g. by way of a judgment or settlement, the Federal Office of Justice will, on request of those registered, provide a written statement of the details which are saved in the Register of Representative Actions.
The Federal Office of Justice provides forms for making applications online. The form can also be requested by post by writing to the Federal Office of Justice at Bundesamt für Justiz, Klageregister, 53094 Bonn, Germany. The statement is required for, among other things, making individual claims at court.
Court settlements
Representative actions can be brought to an end with a settlement conferring rights and responsibilities on the parties registered. Settlements must be authorised by the courts. The Federal Office of Justice publishes settlements as authorised in the Register of Representative Actions. Any party registered as part of a representative action may, within a month of the settlement being made known, withdraw from the settlement. Such withdrawal must be communicated in the form of electronic text or in writing. The Federal Office of Justice makes available on its website a form for withdrawal from the settlement, which you can find by going to “Official Announcements in Register of Representative Actions” below the action in question. The form can also be requested by post by writing to the Federal Office of Justice at Bundesamt für Justiz, Klageregister, 53094 Bonn, Germany. If withdrawal from the settlement is declared by a lawyer, this must be done using the form which the Federal Office of Justice makes available electronically for these purposes.
Those registered who withdraw from the settlement are no longer bound by its terms. This means that they do not stand to benefit from the solution mutually agreed between the parties to the representative action. Such withdrawal does not have the effect of de-registering the individual concerned from the register. Other legal effects of the representative action, such as its preventing the statute of limitations from passing, are maintained. As an effective and court approved settlement results in the representative action being ended, the parties who have withdrawn are free to pursue their own case.
You will find more information on representative actions on our German-language website.