A legal register for the duties of your officers.
A legal register (Rechtskataster) records which duties apply to a company, where they come from and who fulfils them. CIVAC builds that register along the officer roles: which roles your company has to fill, which duties each role carries, with legal basis, owner, deadline and evidence. It is not a register of every law that touches your company, and that is deliberately the first thing said here.
How the legal register is built in CIVAC
The word Rechtskataster appears in no German statute. A register of applicable legal requirements is expressly required by point 3 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009, which means only for organisations registering under EMAS. Beyond that, demand comes from management systems such as ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, whose auditors check how compliance obligations were identified and how compliance with them is evaluated, and from management's duty of supervision. The legal position in detail is set out in the article /en/news/legal-register-duty-emas-annex-i-section-130-owig-register-and-evidence.
The duty of supervision as the legal ground
The second sentence of Section 130 Para. 1 OWiG reads: "Zu den erforderlichen Aufsichtsmaßnahmen gehören auch die Bestellung, sorgfältige Auswahl und Überwachung von Aufsichtspersonen." (The necessary supervisory measures include the appointment, careful selection and monitoring of supervisory personnel.) Under sentence 1, an owner who fails to take the necessary supervisory measures commits an administrative offence if a contravention occurs that proper supervision would have prevented or made much harder. Where the breach of duty is punishable as a crime, the fine under Section 130 Para. 3 sentence 1 OWiG reaches up to one million euros. A register that assigns every duty to an appointed person is the evidence that this selection and monitoring takes place.
Step 1: which roles your company has to fill
The duty check reads your company profile, meaning industry, size, location and the details from onboarding, and classifies each officer role: appointment mandatory, recommended or to monitor, each with its statutory trigger. The result is a classification with a legal basis, not binding legal information. Without an account, the officer duty check at /en/tools/officer-duty-check shows thresholds, form of appointment and qualification per role.
Step 2: which duties attach to each role
For every booked role, the regulatory radar produces a checklist on demand: the standing duties and the established recent legal developments this role has to keep in view, each with its legal basis and phrased as a verification task ("Verify that ..."). The list is produced with AI support and names only established norms. It is expressly not a daily news service and does not run by itself in the background: you trigger it, for example at the start of a quarter or before an audit.
Step 3: who fulfils the duty and by when
Each checklist item can be turned into a task with one click, with a responsible person and a due date. Open tasks appear in the daily deadline warnings and in the weekly digest of open work. That is how a duty in a statute becomes a task with a name and a date.
Step 4: evidence for the audit
Completed tasks, trainings and audit findings flow into the monthly documentation workflow and can be exported as DOCX, XLSX and PDF. For an audit under ISO 14001 or ISO 45001 this shows which obligations were identified, who owns them and how compliance is evidenced.
Where the legal register ends
CIVAC is not a law firm. The legal register classifies duties and makes them manageable; it does not answer a legal question for your company, and whether a duty applies in a given case is decided by your legal department or your lawyer. It covers the duties that attach to officer roles. Site-specific conditions from your permit, product law outside these roles and foreign law are not captured on their own. You can add such duties as your own tasks, but the system does not identify them for you.
The legal register at a glance
- Structure
- By officer role, each duty with legal basis, owner, deadline and evidence
- Which roles apply
- Duty check from the company profile: mandatory, recommended, monitor
- Which duties apply
- Regulatory radar per booked role, on demand, as a checklist with legal basis
- Updates
- On demand by you, no automatic change service
- Control
- Tasks with owner and due date, daily deadline warning, weekly digest
- Evidence
- Monthly documentation workflow, export as DOCX, XLSX, PDF
- Jurisdiction
- German law and EU law applicable in Germany on officer duties
- Price
- Part of the platform: 49 € per officer role per month
Frequently asked questions about the legal register
Is a legal register required by law?
Not under that name. A register of applicable legal requirements is expressly required only by point 3 of Annex I to the EMAS Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009, and only for organisations that register under EMAS voluntarily. In practice it is also required by management systems such as ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, whose auditors check whether the company has identified its compliance obligations and evaluates compliance with them. On top of that comes the duty of supervision under Section 130 OWiG, which under Para. 1 sentence 2 includes the appointment, careful selection and monitoring of supervisory personnel.
How does the CIVAC legal register differ from a legal database?
A legal database captures as many provisions as possible and checks whether they apply. CIVAC starts from the officer roles: which role your company has to fill and which duties that role carries. That is narrower, but every duty has a responsible person, a deadline and evidence attached. If you need a register of all environmental and product law provisions, you need a provider that maintains that database in addition.
Does CIVAC report changes in the law automatically?
No. The regulatory radar runs on demand and produces, per role, a checklist of standing duties and established recent legal developments. It is not a daily change service. We recommend triggering the checklist at fixed points, for example at the start of each quarter and before every audit, and recording the date in the evidence.
Who decides whether a duty applies to us?
Your company. The duty check and the regulatory radar provide a classification with a legal basis. CIVAC is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. The decision in the individual case is made by your legal department or a lawyer, and you can record that decision on the task.
Does the legal register help in an ISO 14001 or ISO 45001 audit?
For the duties that attach to officer roles, yes: the documentation export shows which duties were identified, who owns them and how they were completed. Site-specific conditions from permits and duties outside the officer roles are added as your own tasks, so that the register is complete for the auditor.
What does the legal register cost?
It is part of the platform at no extra charge. The platform costs 49 € per officer role per month. The regulatory radar produces checklists for the roles you have booked. The officer duty check at /en/tools/officer-duty-check can be used without an account.
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