Impressum in Germany: the website legal notice for non-EU sellers

Your website carries an Impressum if it offers a business service, usually for pay. That includes an online shop. The statute never uses the word. It is §5 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz (DDG), headed “Allgemeine Informationspflichten”, and sellers and buyers call the page the Impressum. The DDG took over from the Telemediengesetz on 14 May 2024: it is the Act of 6 May 2024, and its Article 37(2) repealed the old law.

What goes in it

DDG §5(1) lists what you keep available. These are the items a seller meets.

No. 8 concerns audiovisual media services and does not apply to a shop. The list names an e-mail address and no telephone number. An e-mail address alone is not enough: add a second fast channel, such as a contact form (CJEU C-298/07). The pre-contract information you owe consumers, which includes a telephone number, is in EU consumer law.

The text sets no turnover or order limit. Everything must be easy to recognise, directly reachable and permanently available.

You do not need a German address

No. 1 asks for the address “unter der sie niedergelassen sind”: the address where you are established. A business in the United States puts its US address. §5 asks for no German address and no German representative. The consumer-law side agrees: the address duty in the EU’s consumer rules is not limited to traders established in the EU (EU consumer law).

Whether §5 reaches a seller outside the EU is left open

This is the one point the texts leave open.

• DDG §1(1) says the Act applies to all providers of digital services unless the Act provides otherwise. §5 contains no clause limiting it to providers established in Germany (§1, §5).
• The country-of-origin rule, DDG §3, covers two groups: providers established in Germany, who keep German law when they serve other EU countries (§3(1)), and providers established in another EU country, whose free movement into Germany is not restricted (§3(2)). It does not mention a provider established in a third country. §3(3) no. 2 leaves the rules on consumer contracts untouched.
• Recital 58 of Directive 2000/31/EC says the directive “should not apply” to services supplied by providers established in a third country. A recital is not an article. Article 5 of the directive is the rule that §5 carries out (the DDG’s own footnote lists §5 among the provisions implementing the directive).
• No official text says that a shop outside the EU is exempt from §5.
• The Länder media treaty, which repeats the name-and-address duty, applies to a digital service only if it is established in Germany (MStV §1(7)). DDG §5 has no such clause.

So a shop aimed at buyers in Germany, from the United States or anywhere else, is safest with the Impressum on it. It costs one page. Whether §5 binds you is not settled by the text, and a missing item can cost up to EUR 50,000. For how far German consumer law reaches your sales, see EU consumer law.

A second law, for editorial content

The Medienstaatsvertrag (MStV) binds a shop only if it is established in Germany (MStV §1(7)). A seller established outside Germany is outside §18 and its fine.

For a provider established in Germany, MStV §18(1) repeats the core: name and address, and for a legal person the name and address of the person authorised to represent it. Within its scope it leaves out telemedia that serve exclusively personal or family purposes.

MStV §18(2) adds one duty for offers with journalistic-editorial content: name a responsible person with name and address. That person must have a permanent residence in Germany, must not have lost by court ruling the capacity to hold public office, and must have unrestricted legal capacity and be open to unrestricted criminal prosecution. A shop with product pages only has no such content.

What a missing item costs

DDG §33(2) no. 1 makes it an administrative offence to keep a §5(1) item unavailable, wrong or incomplete, intentionally or through negligence. The fine can be up to EUR 50,000 (§33(6) no. 3). For a provider established in Germany, a missing name or address under MStV §18(1) can be fined up to EUR 50,000 as well, by the Landesmedienanstalt responsible (MStV §115).

What you do

1. Make one page with every item in the table that applies to you.
2. Link it from every page of the site, in the footer, and keep it up.
3. Put the address where you are established, your e-mail address and a contact form, your register and register number, and your VAT or business identification number if you hold one.
4. If you are a company, add the legal form and the person who represents it.

If §5 binds you and the page is missing, wrong or incomplete, the fine can be up to EUR 50,000 (§33(2) no. 1, (6) no. 3).