contract-law germany language
The controlling language in German employment contracts
<p>I am about to be employed in Germany under an American company which has a branch office in Germany. </p>

<p>Recently I got a contract from them that has side-by-side translations with German on the left and English on the right. I found a critical anomaly in the contract about currency format used to state my yearly salary. On both the sides german and english they have used american currency format</p>

<p>Example:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p><strong>German</strong>: EUR 45,000      ----------->       <strong>English</strong>: EUR 45,000</p>
</blockquote>

<p>which is only correct for the English format, as in German it only mean 45 EUROS instead of 45000 :o</p>

<p>My questions are:</p>

<ol>
<li>Should I get it in the right format in German part?</li>
<li>IN such cases in germany which language is the binding language when not explicitly stated in the contract?</li>
</ol>

<p>Can you ask the company to add the spelled out of the number to the text?
If this will make you more comfortable.</p>

<p>Also, I sometimes found an English text from European body that use the format of 12456 (no thousand mark at all) or 12 456 (use space).</p>

<p>Even though I am not a lawyer, I am pretty sure that any German employment court would decide to use a common sense interpretation of the contract and assume "EUR 45,000" means "Forty-five thousand Euro" not "Forty-five Euro". </p>

<ul>
<li>Euro is a currency with two decimal places, not three</li>
<li>Mixing up English and German number formats is a common mistake</li>
<li>The English translation makes the intention clear (even if the contract says that the binding version is the German one)</li>
<li>Paying an employee 45 € <em>per year</em> for a regular employment would not only be extremely unreasonable, it would also break the German minimum wage law which mandates 9.19 € per hour.</li>
</ul>

<p>In General, the German employment law is very employee-friendly. When in doubt, German employment courts  tend to side with the employee, not the employer.</p>
