Do You Need an Impressum on an English-Language Website?

Every few months someone sends me the same message. Their site is in English, their customers are in Germany, and they have been told they need an Impressum. Can that be true of a page with no German on it anywhere?

It is. Nobody drafting the rule was thinking about language, because the duty solves a different problem: letting a visitor find out quickly who is behind a commercial website and where a letter can be sent.

Language is not the test

Germany's rule sits in § 5 DDG and applies to digital services offered on a business basis, which in practice means every company website that is not a hobby page. It does not mention language at all.

Two things decide whether you are caught: where your business is established, and, if that is not Germany, whether the site is directed at the German market. Language enters at the second point, and it cuts against you, because one signal courts weigh when asking whether a trader targets a country is a language other than the one normally used where that trader sits.

The checklist comes from Pammer and Hotel Alpenhof, joined cases the Court of Justice decided on 7 December 2010 (C-585/08 and C-144/09). It concerned jurisdiction rather than Impressums, but it is the list everyone uses: prices in another currency, an international dialling code, a foreign top level domain, search advertising aimed at that country. Reachability on its own is not enough.

The law was renamed in 2024, and the internet has not caught up

If you researched this before, you were told the rule is § 5 TMG. That was right for two decades and stopped being right on 14 May 2024, when the Telemediengesetz was replaced by the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz, the German statute sitting alongside the EU Digital Services Act. For the Impressum the change was cosmetic: “Telemedien” became “digitale Dienste”, the section number stayed at 5, and the required particulars did not change. Elsewhere the reform moved more, since the old liability privileges gave way to Articles 4 to 6 of the Digital Services Act, but none of that reaches an ordinary business footer.

What changed for you is the citation. Nothing obliges you to name the section, since the duty is to publish the information rather than cite its source, but almost every German Impressum carries that heading and one pointing at a repealed law is free to fix. The same reform renamed the cookie consent law, TTDSG, to TDDDG, so your privacy policy may carry the same stale reference. While you are in the footer, drop any link to the EU Online Dispute Resolution platform: it closed on 20 July 2025.

What § 5 DDG actually requires

Eight items, most of which will not apply to you:

• Your name and the address where you are established, plus, for a company, its legal form, the people authorised to represent it, and any share capital figures given.
• Details allowing quick electronic contact and direct communication, including the email address.
• The competent supervisory authority, where the activity needs authorisation.
• The register you are entered in and your registration number.
• For regulated professions, your chamber, your professional title and the state that granted it, and where the rules can be read.
• Your VAT identification number under § 27a UStG, or business identification number under § 139c AO.
• For certain company forms, a note that the company is in liquidation.
• For audiovisual media services, the state of establishment and the regulators.

Most small firms are finished after the first two, plus VAT and, for a GmbH, the register entry. The address has to be one where documents can be served on you, so a PO box will not do. § 5(2) leaves duties under other laws untouched, so consumer withdrawal rights and distance selling rules sit elsewhere.

The statute also says how it must be presented. Leicht erkennbar, unmittelbar erreichbar und ständig verfügbar: easily recognisable, directly reachable, permanently available. In practice, a footer link on every page with a label people recognise. The Federal Court of Justice held on 20 July 2006 (I ZR 228/03) that details reached through two links marked “Kontakt” and “Impressum” satisfied that test, since both words are established enough that an ordinary user knows where they lead. The label matters more than the clicks.

The second duty most sites miss

§ 18 of the Medienstaatsvertrag, the interstate treaty governing media in Germany, runs alongside the DDG. Paragraph 1 wants a name and address from any provider of telemedia not serving purely personal or family purposes, a wider net than § 5 DDG because it catches clubs, campaigns and hobby sites that address the public rather than family and friends.

Paragraph 2 surprises businesses. Where a site carries journalistic-editorial content, you must additionally name a person responsible for it, with name and address, and only a natural person can hold that role. What counts as journalistic-editorial is unsettled. The cautious reading is that a steady stream of opinion-forming articles is inside it while a brochure site of five service pages is not, which puts a resources section like this one arguably inside.

Then comes the complication for anyone outside Germany. The third sentence of § 18(2) requires the person named to be permanently resident in Germany, of full legal capacity, not disqualified from public office, and prosecutable there without restriction. A one-person business in Amsterdam or Lahore cannot meet that. My own Impressum names me under § 18(2), which on the strict reading it cannot validly do, because I am not resident in Germany. I publish it because naming somebody beats naming nobody, not because it satisfies the provision. If you are established in Germany, name someone who genuinely qualifies. If you are not, you are choosing the least bad option rather than complying.

Austria: a different list, and a second law on top

Austria is not Germany with different spelling: two duties run in parallel, and the second asks for something German law never mentions.

§ 5(1) of the E-Commerce-Gesetz is the close cousin of § 5 DDG, since both implement the same European directive. It asks for the same core: name or company name, the geographic address of establishment, contact details including an email address, register number and register court, the supervisory authority where there is one, VAT number, and chamber and professional title for a regulated trade.

On top sits the Mediengesetz, which is where most guidance goes wrong. Its § 24 Impressum covers printed works and recurring electronic media, meaning a newsletter going out at least four times a year, not websites: the Austrian government's own business portal says so in as many words. What binds a website is the § 25 disclosure duty, the Offenlegung, and it has two levels.

A small website, one presenting a business without editorial content capable of shaping public opinion, gets the short version in § 25(5): name or company, the business purpose where there is one, and the seat or place of residence. That middle item is the one people miss, because the German list has no equivalent to it. A site that does form public opinion owes the full version, including shareholdings with percentages and a statement of its editorial direction, the Blattlinie.

Switzerland: no Impressum law, but a rule that catches shops

Switzerland is neither an EU nor an EEA state and has no general Impressum statute, which gets repeated online as though Swiss sites owed nothing at all.

What they do owe is Article 3(1)(s) of the Unfair Competition Act (UWG, SR 241), in force in this form since 1 April 2012. A person acts unfairly if they offer goods, works or services in electronic commerce and then fail to do four things: give clear and complete information about their identity and contact address, including the electronic mail address; point out the technical steps leading to a contract; allow input errors to be corrected; and confirm the order promptly by electronic means.

The trigger is narrower than the German one. A German business site with nothing to buy on it is still caught by § 5 DDG, while a Swiss brochure site is, on the usual reading, outside Article 3(1)(s). Where the offer can be taken up on the site, a shop, a booking system, a paid sign-up, the duty applies wherever the provider sits. Enforcement is quieter than in Germany, since competitors and affected customers have to sue under Article 10 UWG and no warning-letter industry sits behind it.

Where you are established decides which list applies

Established in Germany or Austria. Your own list applies in full, whatever language you publish in, and there is no exemption to hunt for.

Established elsewhere in the EEA. The country-of-origin principle applies. Article 3 of the e-Commerce Directive, in Germany § 3 DDG, makes a provider established in one member state answer to that state's rules for the matters the directive covers, from the information a site must show to how a contract is concluded online, and, with narrow exceptions written into the same section, stops other member states restricting services arriving from another. A Dutch company selling into Germany complies with Dutch law, and the lists barely differ since every state implemented the same Article 5. Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are inside it too.

Established outside the EEA. The shield is gone, because country of origin protects providers established in a member state, and a business in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States or Pakistan is not one. Brexit put the UK in this group.

What follows for that third group is less settled, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. The working analysis is that unfair competition claims follow the law of the market affected, under Article 6(1) of the Rome II Regulation, and that German courts treat the provider-information duty as a rule of market conduct under § 3a UWG, so a foreign site competing for German customers can be held to the German list. The decision cited the other way is Landgericht Siegen, 9 July 2013, 2 O 36/13, where a non-EU operator performing its services entirely outside the EU was held not to owe one, on unusual facts and at first instance. German lawyers criticised it hard at the time, arguing that the effect on the German market should have decided it.

So the practical answer is unglamorous: publish the German list, because there is no real downside to giving more identifying information than you strictly owe. I am in that third group myself, working from Pakistan and selling into Europe, and that is the position I have taken. There is more about me if it matters.

What getting it wrong actually costs

Two mechanisms, and the one people worry about is not the one that bites. The regulator's route is a fine: under § 33(2) no. 1 DDG, keeping the § 5 information unavailable, wrong or incomplete is an administrative offence, and § 33(6) no. 3 sets the ceiling at €50,000. Supervision sits with the state media authorities, who are not sweeping the web for footers.

The realistic risk is the Abmahnung: a formal warning letter, usually from a lawyer acting for a competitor or a trade association, demanding you stop and sign an undertaking never to do it again. Private parties police competition rules directly in Germany, which is why this became an industry.

That industry was curtailed in 2020, a change most English-language articles predate. § 13(3) UWG lets someone sending a justified warning recover their costs, and § 13(4) no. 1 removes that right from competitors where the breach concerns statutory information duties in electronic commerce or digital services, which is what a defective Impressum is.

Real relief, and not the whole picture. The exclusion covers competitors, claimants under § 8(3) no. 1, while associations, consumer bodies and chambers of commerce claim under the other numbers and their costs stand. The demand that you stop survives either way, so ignoring a letter can put you in front of a court over something that takes ten minutes to fix. Austria adds fines of up to €3,000 under § 26 ECG and €20,000 for the Mediengesetz disclosure duty.

Common questions

The check of 1,089 business websites covers what else tends to be quietly broken, and the prices are published.