GERMANY Law and Practice Contributed by: Thomas Lennarz, Peter Wende and Christian Piroutek, CMS
CMS Theodor-Heuss-Strasse 29 70174 Stuttgart Germany Tel: +49 711 9764 0 Fax: +49 711 9764 900 Email: stuttgart@cms-hs.com Web: www.cms.law
1. Policy Development of Collective Redress/Class Action Mechanisms 1.1 History and Policy Drivers of the Legislative Regime German civil procedure has traditionally been based on individual rights enforcement, with court decisions only binding the parties involved (inter partes effect). The first collective redress instruments implemented in Germany were designed to address specific gaps in law rather than to introduce a general class action mechanism comparable to the US model. From 2002 onwards, the Injunctions Act ( Unterlassung- sklagengesetz , or “UKlaG”) was the first law to intro- duce a mechanism with collective redress elements, allowing qualified consumer and business associa- tions to seek injunctions against unlawful commercial practices or invalid general terms and conditions. In 2005, the Act on Model Proceedings in Capital Mar- ket Disputes ( Kapitalanleger-Musterverfahrensgesetz , or “KapMuG”) was created in light of mass investor claims ‒ notably, following the Deutsche Telekom IPO ‒ to resolve recurring legal and factual issues in one model case while leaving individual damages to be decided in individual proceedings. In 2018, in response to the Volkswagen emissions scandal (“Dieselgate”), the model declaratory action ( Musterfeststellungsklage ) was introduced in the Ger- man Code of Civil Procedure ( Zivilprozessordnung , or ZPO). This procedure enables qualified entities to clar- ify common factual and legal issues for large groups of consumers who can participate through a publicly accessible opt-in register. The Model Declaratory Action has a limited scope of application, as consum-
ers generally still need to file subsequent proceedings to obtain compensation or other forms of relief in case no settlement was reached in the Model Declaratory Action proceedings. In 2023, Germany implemented the Directive (EU) 2020/1828 (the “EU Representative Actions Directive”) by means of the Consumer Rights Enforcement Act ( Verbraucherrechtedurchsetzungsgesetz , or “VDuG”). The VDuG introduced the redress action ( Abhil- feklage ), which complements the model declaratory action and – going beyond the latter’s scope – for the first time allows qualified entities to claim compensa- tion and other remedies (eg, contract termination or price reduction) directly on behalf of consumers and small businesses. As of September 2025, a total number of eight redress actions have been published in the official claims register. Although this number appears modest, the mechanism is already reshaping consumer litigation in Germany. By offering a more streamlined path to collective compensation, it is expected to encour- age more strategic claims by consumer associa- tions, especially in fields such as data protection and ESG-related disputes. The first effects of this trend can already be seen in pending cases against TikTok, Meta, and X. The underlying policy rationale of these mechanisms is to enhance consumer access to justice, ensure greater legal certainty in mass harm cases, and estab- lish more efficient procedures that relieve courts from handling a large number of parallel individual claims. Please note that, for reasons of clarity and brevity, the following sections focus on the most prominent
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