GERMANY Trends and Developments Contributed by: Johanna Wirth, Maximilian Bülau, Philipp Hanfland and Carsten van de Sande, Hengeler Mueller
relevant senates may also be assigned fewer case numbers than senates dealing with regular civil mat- ters. Nine federal states have already established a com- mercial court – significantly more than the five origi- nally anticipated by the federal legislature. While case numbers remain modest at this early stage, initial experience is encouraging. The Hamburg Commer- cial Court delivered the first-ever commercial court judgment in Germany in November 2025, resolving a battery cell purchase dispute in just four months. In Hesse, approximately 60 proceedings with a com- bined value of around EUR450 million have already been filed since the court opened on 1 July 2025, and the Stuttgart Regional Court’s commercial chamber (which had been established prior to the new act) has already handled around 400 cases in its first four years of operation. Of course, whether the new commercial courts will be accepted by corporate litigants remains to be seen. However, they may well turn out to be a game chang- er in the struggle to address longstanding concerns about the limits of general civil courts when handling complex business litigation. Collective Redress Under the Consumer Rights Enforcement Act The Consumer Rights Enforcement Act, which entered into force on 13 October 2023, implements the EU Representative Actions Directive (EU) 2020/1828 into German law. Intended to provide an efficient and cost- effective means for consumers to collectively pursue claims via consumer associations and other qualified entities, the cautious approach of the German legis- lature had not given rise to high expectations. In par- ticular, strict limits on third-party funding (a redress action is inadmissible if the funder is promised more than 10% of the proceeds) meant that the associa- tions tasked with initiating the representative actions would likely be restricted in their ability to find suf- ficient funding. And indeed, only 17 representative actions under the Consumer Rights Enforcement Act have been pub- licly registered with the Federal Office of Justice so far. These actions cover challenges to unilateral price
increases by energy providers, telecommunications companies, and streaming services, data protection and data processing claims, and challenges to unfair contract terms and unilateral service changes, such as those brought against Amazon Prime Video and Debeka. Notably, last year has seen the first two cross-bor- der representative actions, with the Dutch Stichting Onderzoek Marktinformatie (SOMI) suing TikTok and X in Germany – based on claims that the defend- ants pursued an addictive business model harming adolescents, and engaged in political microtargeting, respectively. So, while German consumer associa- tions have been slow to pick up on the new claims mechanism, the cross-border mechanism may well allow for more international high-profile cases being brought by way of collective redress. Legal Tech Different from many other European countries, Ger- many has never endorsed any form of opt-out class action. While this appears to be an impediment to bringing large groups of claimants to the table, the lacuna has given rise to some innovative business models seeking to provide cheap (often non-recourse) access to legal proceedings for claimants. The most common workaround is the so-called assignment model, where claimants assign their claims to a fund- ed SPV which will act as claimant in the litigation and will bear all costs of the litigation. If successful, the assignors will receive a share of the proceeds, while the other share will go to the funder and the initiator. Over the past decade, more sophisticated legal ser- vices providers have emerged in Germany who lever- age technology and automated processes to enforce consumer rights on a mass scale. Companies such as Flightright, Conny, and MyRight have pioneered a model in which consumers can pursue legal claims at no upfront cost, with the provider assuming the financial risk and taking a commission from success- ful outcomes. The first wave of these providers focused on highly standardised claims where the legal questions were relatively settled but enforcement had historically been neglected. Flightright, for example, built its business
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