Foreign producers without a subsidiary in Germany – Options available for your registration

It will of course remain possible for foreign entities to continue sell EEE-equipment in Germany. As an alternative to establishing subsidiary in Germany, the new legislation provides for the appointment of an authorized representative. As an alternative one can establish a subsidiary in Germany or change to other distribution channels. In the following we will explain shortly all the possibilities.

Authorized Representative

A service provider can be appointed as an authorized representative in the terms of Art. 8 para. 2 of ElektroG for a given company and take over its rights and obligations towards ElektroG. The risks resulting from this are accordingly charged for, and due to this, this service appears at first glance to be quite expensive.

Subsidiary

If the producer has a subsidiary in Germany, there is the possibility to register with this subsidiary at stiftung ear. In this case it only has to be proven to stiftung ear that the German subsidiary is carrying out a commercial activity and that for this purpose it is leasing premises and making payments to personnel. The registration with the German trade register (Handelsregister) can be omitted in this case.

Changing distribution channels

By law, a producer is obliged to register also in the case that he sells his products in Germany through a distributor. In practice though, the distributor will only be called into account if there is no registration presented for the marketed products. If producer and distributor agree for the distributor the register with stiftung ear and accordingly registers all devices with the brand of the producer, then the obligations of the producer towards stiftung ear would be in this case satisfied.