News & Stories

Paris. On the eve of its 38th annual congress which will be held in Turin from 4-7 November, Jaume Tàpies, President of Relais & Châteaux, publicly commented the ongoing investigation against Régis Bulot.

Berlin. A new law to support mediation regulating procedures of extrajudicial conflict management will likely still come into force this year after several months of negotiations in the German Bundesrat's arbitration committee. The new mediation law passed on June 27, 2012, is even being celebrated by the daily press as a paradigm change of Germany's legal culture. It has a special meaning for hotel owners and operators, as they mostly depend on collaboration with their contractual partners. Facing terms of more than 20 years, conflicts arising from complex hotel agreements that sometimes involve reconciling German law and the law of a foreign contractual partner cannot always be avoided. In many cases, they can be settled by cool-headed lawyers in the course of negotiations. But what if this does not work out? A mediation procedure will often then take effect. Auditor Matthias Schroeder explains the whole issue. In December, he will take his exam as a mediator.

Leipzig/Berlin. The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig this week held that certain elements of the tax on overnight stays levied on hotel guests to be unconstitutional. Although the tax wasn't struck down outright, it is nonetheless a win for the hotel industry as the judgement is likely to make the practical implementation of the tax impossible.

Strasbourg. Former president of Relais & Châteaux, Regis Bulot, was released from prison last Tuesday after seven months in custody in Strasbourg.

Offenbach. A recent judgement from the Federal Labour Court has caught German employers on the back foot: The Court held age-specific allocation of holiday entitlement to be in breach of the German Equal Treatment Act. The Court set out its reasoning in a judgement from March 2012. Rules applied by the hotel industry differ across Germany's federal states; Mecklenburg Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt must now act in response to the judgement.

Bonn. The German Federal Cartel Office activated an electronic system for the acceptance of anonymous tips on cartel offences last week.

Munich. It is the nightmare of every hotelier: The hotel slips into the red over a longer period of time and ultimately becomes insolvent. The final result is almost always a forced sale and the "end" for both company and staff alike. This is now set to change with the new German Insolvency Act. In order to encourage entrepreneurs to take recourse to the administrative courts before it's too late, the amendment makes a number of changes to insolvency law as it currently stands. Accordingly, the focus has been shifted away from liquidation and towards restructuring. Yet despite these changes, the amendment is powerless to remove the stigma of failure, nor can it do anything to improve the competence of managers.

Offenbach. Nothing in the field of work is so often disputed as the contents of the employee reference. The main point of argument is often whether the contents of the reference contain a latent code which tells the head of personnel at the next company something different to that which is understood at first reading. The German Federal Labour Court recently took another look at this issue.

Offenbach. The "Emmely" case, which involved a supermarket checkout lady and the theft of a credit token worth EUR 1.30, was the subject of heated discussion in Germany, even amongst academic lawyers. The judgment handed down by the Federal Labour Court last year held in favour of the checkout lady. Now, in a new and apparently very similar case, the Court has decided differently: The Court held that manipulation of working time records by the employee would justify the employer in terminating the employment relationship without first issuing a warning.

Offenbach. For the first time since 2002, the compensation levy for severely disabled workers has been increased in Germany. Employers must note the end of March in their diaries.