Germany (EU)

Germany is a civil-law jurisdiction, which means contracts sit on top of a dense statutory framework — primarily the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, BGB) and related commercial legislation — rather than a long tradition of judge-made contract law. Many default rules are filled in automatically: how obligations are performed, when a party can terminate, what counts as an acceptable delay, and what remedies are available. A German contract is often shorter than its US equivalent because so much does not need to be written.

Where US and UK drafting favors very long exclusions and elaborate carve-outs, German law actively limits how far parties can push those. Standard terms and conditions — anything used more than once without individual negotiation — are subject to strict content controls, and clauses that deviate too far from statutory defaults are often simply struck out. This is why US-style contracts sometimes fail in Germany: the clauses are enforceable where they were drafted, but not where they land.

On top of the BGB, commercial contracts in Germany must account for EU-level rules that apply across member states. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) governs how personal data is processed, competition law limits what can be agreed between market participants, and consumer protection rules apply whenever an individual consumer is on the other side. Getting Germany right usually means thinking in layers: German civil law at the base, EU rules overlaid on top, and a drafting style that is more modest than its Anglo-American equivalent.