News-Archive

Little attention has been paid to employee participation to date in the context of the corona pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis. Employee participation offers various possibilities to provide the company with liquidity or to reduce wage expenses, and at the same time to create an incentive to increase the company’s success beyond the mere preservation of jobs.

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In its social protection package, the legislator had included a new provision in § 14 (4) of the German Working Hours Act [Arbeitszeitgesetz – ArbZG] which makes it possible in exceptional emergencies with a nationwide impact, particularly in epidemic situations of national significance, to permit changes for certain work of employees for a limited time period as exceptions to the existing working time regulations.

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On 22 April 2020, the governmental coalition agreed to increase short-time work compensation. This and further current changes concerning the receipt of short-time work compensation illustrate the current relevance of short-time work as an instrument of labor market policy.

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The “Corona Cabinet” of the Federal Government and federal states has announced new temporary regulations for containing Covid-19. During the concrete implementation of these regulations, many questions have arisen for the trade, which have also reached the Association of the German Nursery Products Industry [Bundesverband Deutscher Kinderausstattungs-Hersteller e.V. – BDKH]. Lioba Hebauer talked to the Cologne lawyers Dr. Daniel Dohrn and Jörn Kuhn of Oppenhoff & Partner about this.

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Works council meetings, economic committee and conciliation board via video and telephone conference

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"SARS-Cov2 Occupational Safety Standard" of 16 April 2020 Following the consultation between the federal and state governments on 15 April 2020, the restrictions on public life in order to contain the COVID19 epidemic are now to be gradually lifted from Monday, 20 April 2020.

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The event sector has been hit hard by coronavirus and the official event bans. From when and to what extent business can be resumed is impossible to predict. Organizers are being forced to make decisions about the fate of planned events on the basis of uncertain facts, often with far-reaching economic consequences. The "voucher solution" envisaged by the Federal Government will only bring limited relief. These vouchers do not apply to events in a professional context and with a professional audience. In this case, the following legal principles are decisive.

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In response to the corona crisis, the Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium der Fi-nanzen - BMF) has issued a letter of 9 April 2020 granting various simplifications for non-profit legal entities. They shall apply retroactively as of 1 March 2020 to 31 December 2020.

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Why have Esprit and Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof applied for the opening of so-called Protective Shield Proceedings (Schutzschirmverfahren)? After all, by initiating such proceedings, the two companies are foregoing both the recently adopted suspension of the obligation to file for insolvency and the extensive state "rescue packages" intended to mitigate the COVID 19 pandemic (short-time work compensation, KfW loans, etc.). So what are the advantages of Protective Shield Proceedings (Schutzschirmverfahren)?

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As we already reported in our Newsflash of 27 March, the COVID-19 (corona) crisis has brought the regulations for screening foreign investments in the EU and in Germany further into focus. Yesterday, the Federal Cabinet approved the draft bill presented by Federal Economics Minister Altmaier to amend the Foreign Trade and Payments Act (Außenwirtschaftsgesetz - AWG).

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