However, there are still often obstacles to the practical implementation of real laboratories. This is where the regulations come in. Across all areas of innovation, framework conditions are being improved along the entire path of an innovation to testing in a real-world laboratory and from there to general application. A new, important area of application for real-world laboratories is the tailor-made simplification and acceleration of administrative procedures: a general testing clause enables authorities to test better and faster administrative and approval procedures as well as digitalization, e.g. through the use of AI or the merging of several procedural steps – and to deviate from administrative law regulations in the process. Specific freedoms in specialist laws also allow for trials in healthcare, youth media protection, digital administration, register modernization for the economy, education, the telecommunications sector and aviation.
Federal Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche: With the Federal Testing Act, we are creating space for ideas that move our country forward. Those who want innovation must not be slowed down by a thicket of regulation. We are giving business and administration the freedom to try out new things more quickly – so that good ideas become real momentum.
Federal Digital Minister Dr. Karsten Wildberger: “Today we are cutting through the Gordian knot of German administrative bureaucracy. The Federal Trials Act gives local authorities the freedom to simply make the state fast, digital and unbureaucratic. This puts the decision in the hands of the people who know the processes in their area of responsibility best. Trust instead of control: we are finally giving our civil servants the freedom to act boldly and innovatively.
Strengthening and expanding the existing draft law
In concrete terms, the federal government is proposing to strengthen and expand the existing draft law in the parliamentary process in three ways. The aim is to expand it into a comprehensive federal testing law.
- Improving the framework conditions for innovation funding across all sectors: Approval processes will become more innovation-friendly and the practical implementation of real-world laboratories will be supported. Structured knowledge transfer ensures that practical findings are quickly taken into account in legislation, paving the way for future solutions on the market.
- Authorization of the authorities to deviate from rigid federal administrative regulations: Measures to speed up or reduce the costs of administrative and approval procedures as well as administrative digitalization can be tested locally in future – e.g. by using AI, merging official responsibilities and procedural steps or testing proactive administrative services. To this end, federal, state and local authorities may deviate from certain federal administrative regulations. If the trial is successful, it will be rolled out across Germany and federal regulations will be adapted.
- Creation of new legal experimentation clauses, which are to be implemented through additional articles in seven specialist laws. This will create specific new scope for the economy, state and society.
New scope for testing
In these areas, new experimentation clauses will allow innovations and technological progress to be tested in practice in future:
- Healthcare: Testing simplified conformity assessment procedures for IT systems in order to bring digital solutions to healthcare more quickly.
- Digital administration: amendments to the OZG will enable the EUDI wallet for digital identity to be tested. A trial operation possible on the basis of the law can prepare for the introduction of the wallet in Germany.
- Media protection for minors: Automated rating systems open up new ways of assigning age ratings. This promises faster, more efficient procedures while maintaining the same high level of protection.
- Reducing bureaucracy for the economy: trial connection of various registers to the basic business data register and thus testing the seamless networking of the administration. This would be the prerequisite for companies only having to enter their data once in accordance with the once-only principle. Companies would thus benefit from significantly reduced reporting obligations.
- Education: simplification of the BAföG approval process. Testing the automated retrieval of evidence speeds up the application process and reduces the administrative burden.
- Telecommunications sector: The new regulation enables the Federal Network Agency to approve temporary deviations from regulatory requirements in the area of frequency regulation – whenever this serves to test new technologies or procedures. This will create the framework for forward-looking developments such as quantum technologies or innovative network operating procedures.
- Air traffic law: In future, it will be possible to regulate the testing of modern technologies in airspace in real laboratories, particularly in the area of unmanned aerial systems and so-called U-space concepts.
All recommendations in the drafting aid aim to bring innovations into practice more quickly and at the same time make the administration fit for the future. The combination of regulatory flexibility and targeted practical testing creates new opportunities for technological development, economic growth and citizen-oriented services.
Testing clauses in the federal states
The Federal Testing Act supplements existing comparable regulations on testing and flexibilization from Brandenburg, Baden-Württemberg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hesse with the general testing clause. In North Rhine-Westphalia, a “Law on the trial exemption from regulations for municipal bodies (KommBefrG)” was also passed by the cabinet yesterday, May 5, 2026, which allows municipalities to deviate from state law.
The formulation aid for an amendment to the Reallabore Act can be found here: https://www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Gesetz/2026/20260504-formulierungshilfe-gesetzentwurf-verbesserung-rahmenbedingungen-erprobung-von-innovationen-in-reallaboren.html
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Further links
👉 www.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de
Photo: pixabay
