Contract Law in Germany

Contract law in Germany is regulated by the German Civil Code, which is over 120 years old. Nevertheless, contract law in particular has been the subject of far-reaching reforms since the beginning of the 2000s, such as through the Act on the Modernisation of the Law of Obligations of 2001. About 20 years later, due to developments in the field of digitalisation, another major reform took place. Both reforms were significantly influenced by a process of harmonisation within the European Union. At the same time, the early twenty-first century was marked by various crises, such as the financial crisis, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought about profound social changes. Against this backdrop, this chapter examines the influence the aforementioned crises have had on the developments in contract law and, in particular, on the process of legal convergence within the European Union. It is shown that there is a clear convergence of national legal systems in contract law, although crises only have a minor impact on this.