Monthly Dose of Germany: July 2024

The future of legal work?

Exploring the potential of Generative AI in legal services

Despite the transformative promise of ‘legal tech’ over recent years, the work of the legal function has remained largely unchanged and legal technology solutions have delivered only incremental improvement. At Deloitte Legal, we believe that Generative AI has the potential to drive genuine, sustainable change in the way legal services are received and delivered.

We conducted a survey to gather our clients' views on Generative AI, including its benefits, barriers to adoption, and impact on the legal ecosystem. The survey involved senior legal leadership from 43 of our largest clients. The executive summary presents the key findings, while the full report includes our market insights and perspectives on the future of legal work and the legal industry.

Navigating the DORA contract compliance challenge

Reviewing and updating IT-related supplier contracts to match the numerous requirements formulated by the Digital Operational Resilience Act (“DORA”) poses a tough challenge to financial entities, especially given the 17 January 2025 deadline. An efficient, systematic and digitally enabled review process is key to ensuring a DORA-compliant contract landscape.

UPDATE: On 8 July 2024, BaFin published for the first time a Supervisory Notice with implementation guidance on DORA as a (non-binding) guideline for affected financial institutions.

Read more regarding the most important points with regard to the contractual implementation of DORA in this article.

Does telecommunications secrecy apply to employers - Is a decades-long dispute finally coming to an end?

29. Report of the State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information North Rhine-Westphalia

For almost two decades, there has been a debate as to whether employers who allow or at least tolerate their employees' private use of business email and telecommunications services are subject to the secrecy of telecommunications, as has particularly been advocated by data protection authorities until recently.

Company Pension Strengthening Act 2.0

Key innovations from the draft bill to strengthen company pension schemes

On 24 June 2024, the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Federal Ministry of Finance published the long-awaited draft bill of the second law to strengthen company pension schemes ("BRSG 2.0-E"). In this Client Alert, we summarise the key findings from BRSG 2.0.

Planned changes to the Investment Regulation: infrastructure ratio and facilitation provisions in the draft of the Second Act to Strengthen Company Pensions

At a glance:

• To facilitate infrastructure investments, a separate infrastructure ratio (Infrastrukturquote) of 5% is to be introduced into the Investment Regulation (Anlageverordnung) as a new minimum diversification requirement (Mischungsquote).
• The draft includes an increase in the risk capital investment ratio (Risikokapitalanlagenquote) from 35% to 40% of the guarantee assets (Sicherungsvermögen).
• In future, it should also be possible to use the so-called opening clause (Öffnungsklausel) for exceeding the diversification limits (Streuungsquote).
  

The draft bill of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS) on the Second Act to Strengthen Company Pensions, which was published in coordination with the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) on 24 June 2024, provides among other things for important changes to the Investment Regulation (Anlageverordnung - AnlV). The AnlV regulates the investment of the guarantee assets (Sicherungsvermögen) of Pensionskassen (pension funds), small insurance undertakings and funeral expense funds (hereinafter referred to as "AnlV Investors"). A key component of the draft is the revision and expansion of the investment opportunities available to AnlV Investors, especially in the infrastructure segment.

"Monthly Dose" Employment Law: 06/2024

The sixth edition of our Monthly Dose Employment Law in 2024 on current case law explains the judgments of

(1) the German Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht, BAG) dated 5 December 2023 (9 AZR 230/22) on offsetting of vacation entitlements in dual employment relationships,

(2) the BAG dated 13 December 2023 (1 ABR 28/22) on the submission of  application documents to the works council in digital form,

(3) the Regional Labour Court (Landesarbeitsgericht, LAG) Baden-Württemberg dated 28 July 2023 (9 Sa 73/21) on the obligation to provide information and removal of warnings in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (Datenschutz-Grundverordnung, DSGVO) in the employment,

(4) the LAG Saxony dated 10 October 2023 (2 TaBVGa 2/23) on the employer's obligation to bear the costs of simultaneous translation for a works meeting (Betriebsversammlung) and

(5) the Labor Court (Arbeitsgericht, ArbG) Aachen dated 31 August 2024 (8 Ca 2199/22) on the “JobRad model” (the company bike model) and employee’s obligation to pay leasing rates in the event of employees’ illness.