On 10 February 2021, the German government presented a government draft for the implementation of the European Digitalization Directive. The Digitalization Directive is part of the 2019 Company Law Package of reforms to the 2017 European Company Law Directive. The subject of the draft is, in particular, the possibility to establish limited liability companies online as well as the digitalization and improvement of various registry matters.

On 20 January 2021, the German government passed a draft legislation to strengthen Germany as a fund location and to implement Directive (EU) 2019/1160 amending Directives 2009/65/EC and 2011/61/EU with regard to the cross-border marketing of collective investment schemes (German Fund Location Act (Fondsstandortgesetz) – FoG), which also provides for tax relief for employee participation programs in startups.

The placement of orders via digital platforms in the form of so-called crowdworking serves to outsource (mostly) small-scale activities to a large number of people who are mostly unknown to the client – the “crowd” – whereby the orders are (frequently) placed via the operator of an online platform. The modern digital structuring of work (inevitably) leads to questions arising about the legal status of those involved in it. In the context of crowdworking, the status of crowdworkers as self-employed or employees had not been clarified until now. The Federal Labor Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht – BAG) has now ruled in a judgment dated 1 December 2020 that a crowdworker in the case to be decided was not self-employed but had to be classified as an employee (case no.: 9 AZR 102/20).