"Collective bargaining coverage in Germany is declining already since many years. Reasons may be found in declining union density and declining density in employers' organizations. At the same time decentralization of collective bargaining takes place and fuels this development. The legislator tried to react by enacting the Act on strengthening collective autonomy, however, until now trend reversal has not taken place.
The author examines in his article models of various European countries with considerably higher collective bargaining coverage. He identifies essentially two different types: regulatory attempts on strengthening coalitions, eg., via the Gent system or mandatory membership in organizations, as well as attempts on extending the binding nature of collective agreements, eg., via statutory and judicial instruments or by universally applicably collective agreements.
Thereafter he examines these approaches on their portability to the German legal order. He comes to the conclusion that foreign regulatory examples are only partially transferable. "

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