BMJ: Civil Procedure Amendment 2021 under review

Aug 18, 2021 Benn-Ibler Rechtsanwälte

The Federal Ministry of Justice (Bundesministerium für Justiz, BMJ) has submitted the draft for the Civil Procedure Amendment 2021 (Zivilverfahrens-Novelle 2021) for review. With this, the BMJ wants to further advance digitalization in the judiciary and thereby also draw upon lessons learned from the Corona pandemic.

First, it is to be clarified that files in civil law cases can also be managed digitally. It is newly regulated that metadata created during digital file management are not part of the file and are therefore not subject to file inspection. In addition, more precise rules are laid down as to how paper submissions are to be transferred to the digital file and vice versa (Sec. 81a Court Organization Act, (Gerichtsorganisationsgesetz, GOG new).

Copying fees will also be adapted to the digital file. Fees will now only be charged for copies made on data carriers provided by the judiciary. The fee will no longer be based on the number of pages, but on the data volume in gigabytes (Court Fees Act, tariff item 15 lit d (Gerichtsgebührengesetz)).

During the pandemic, it was possible to hold entire court hearings as video conferences. Because these proved successful in practice and were accepted, the BMJ now wants to transfer these regulations to permanent law (Sec. 132a of the Code of Civil Procedure (Zivilprozessordnung, ZPO new)). The scheduling of a virtual hearing, however, will always be done by the court; the parties do not have the right to file a motion. In addition, the requirements will be a little stricter in the future than during the pandemic. On the one hand, the consent of the parties is mandatory (which is deemed to be granted in the absence of an objection within a certain period of time), the technical requirements must be met, the program of the hearing must also be suitable for videoconferencing, and it must be feasible from the point of view of procedural economy. The BMJ is thinking in particular of short daily hearings that require only minimal interaction between the court and the parties.

BMJ, Ministerial Draft (26.07.2021)