Germany
The Union's largest market — and one where what stops you is not a tariff but a packaging register
Germany is the first market a Slovak or Czech exporter goes to, and the one they most often get wrong. There is no tariff, the language is solvable and the standards are European — and the first shipment still gets stopped, because the company was not entered in the LUCID packaging register. The market is large, conservative and rewards patience: decision cycles are long, references are checked, and once a supplier is accepted they stay for years. An enquiry with a short deadline and no German-language documentation usually goes unanswered.
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Setting up a company
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Legal forms
- ·Minimum capital
- ·How long registration takes
Taxes
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Corporate income tax
- ·VAT
Visas and residence
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Short stay
- ·Work permit
- ·Residence
What it makes and needs
Automotive and its supply chain, mechanical engineering, chemicals, electrical equipment, medical devices, construction. It buys components, sub-assemblies, machined parts, tooling, packaging and increasingly contract manufacturing — precisely what Central European industry is good at.
Money and payments
Thirty-day terms are normal, sixty with large buyers equally so. Payment discipline is good, and an early-settlement discount (Skonto, usually 2 % for 10 days) is common practice. A new supplier is usually asked to work on prepayment or a deposit for the first orders.
Importing into their market
The Union's single market — no duty is paid and no customs declaration is filed. Goods move freely; no proof of origin and no preference is needed. What replaces the customs work is tax work: a supply to a VAT-registered customer in Nemecka is an intra-Community supply, exempt with the right to deduct, and the customer accounts for the tax. It depends on a valid VAT number checked in VIES and on proof of transport — without both, the exemption falls away and you pay the tax.
THE LUCID PACKAGING REGISTER. The Packaging Act (VerpackG) requires anyone placing packaged goods on the German market for the first time — including a foreign seller, and including transport packaging — to be registered in LUCID BEFORE the first delivery and to hold a contract with a dual system. Without registration, placing the goods on the market is prohibited, marketplaces block the consignment, and fines run to €200,000. Registration is free and takes minutes; the problem is that nobody hears about it until it happens to them.
Supplying a business with a valid VAT number needs no German registration. Registration is needed if you store goods there (including in a marketplace's warehouse), install on site, or sell to consumers above the €10,000 EU-wide annual threshold — then either register or use the OSS scheme.
If people travel with the goods — installation, servicing, training — that is posting of workers under Directives 96/71/EC and 2018/957. It requires notification before work starts, the host country's minimum wage and allowances, documentation in the host country's language, and an A1 certificate for each posted worker. Inspections are frequent in all three of these states and the fines are high.
Outlook
What to watch: industrial output and energy prices, which decide whether German firms move production out or back; the widening of the packaging act and the other extended-producer-responsibility duties, which keep accumulating; and where the automotive supply chain settles as it shifts to electric drivetrains.
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Tell us what you came to this page for and did not find. We will add it — with a source.
A visa, legalising a document, an invitation letter, the commercial attaché before a trade fair — these only go through a mission. Below are the official registers rather than transcribed addresses: missions move and consular hours change several times a year, so a link to the register stays current where a transcript would not.
Where a country has no mission in Bratislava or Prague it is usually accredited from Vienna, Berlin or Warsaw — the register says which.
Every figure names the authority that published it and the date the line was last worked on. This is not legal or tax advice — verify a figure with the named source before you act on it.