Getting ready to keep up the pace: Germany’s Infrastructure Future Act Introduces Faster Permits and Digital Procedures

Germany’s Infrastructure Future Act (Infrastruktur-Zukunftsgesetz) was published in the Federal Law Gazette on 28 July 2026. This new law is intended to reduce the time necessary to implement infrastructure projects. Most of its provisions entered into force on the following day, subject to two exceptions: the amendments to the Federal Nature Conservation Act (Bundesnaturschutzgesetz) take effect on 1 February 2027, and the amended rules on the use of Länder and municipal infrastructure funding take effect retroactively as of 24 October 2025.

Comprising 23 articles, the Infrastructure Future Act amends more than 20 federal statutes covering, among others, rail, road, waterway, aviation, nature conservation, spatial planning, waste management and administrative procedure law. For anyone involved in planning, financing or building German infrastructure projects, this is one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in years.

One of the main objectives of the Infrastructure Future Act is to accelerate the construction and modernisation of infrastructure, in particular through simplified and expedited approval processes. However, approval processes are only one of many factors that can delay these projects. Infrastructure projects are lengthy and complex undertakings. They are highly vulnerable to disruption – whether caused by the parties involved or by external factors – across their various phases (financing, planning, construction and operation). This makes them particularly prone to disputes.

This post outlines the key acceleration mechanisms introduced by the Infrastructure Future Act, before exploring how project participants can manage the dispute risks inherent in infrastructure projects.

Setting the pace: Key Acceleration Mechanisms in the Infrastructure Future Act

The Infrastructure Future Act pursues acceleration through mutually reinforcing mechanisms that recur across rail, road, waterway and public transport legislation. It tackles delay on three fronts in particular.

• Fewer and Faster Approval Procedures

  The act removes a defined set of measures – electrification, digitalisation works, platform conversion, noise barriers, sidings and signalling – entirely from formal planning approval procedure (Planfeststellung) for rail infrastructure. At the same time, challenges to planning approvals for some rail infrastructure projects no longer have automatic suspensory effect. A new clause also confirms that maintenance measures on federal waterways require no prior planning approval procedure. Certain infrastructure projects benefit from a four-year deadline for a decision. This applies in particular to rail, road and waterway projects on EU pre-identified cross-border or missing-link sections, and to projects in European transport corridors (see Regulation (EU) 2024/1679); for the latter, the four-year deadline applies only if the project’s estimated total cost exceeds EUR 300 million. To further expedite the formal planning approval procedure, sponsors (Vorhabensträger) may also request the planning approval authority to appoint a “project manager” to carry out procedural steps on the authority’s behalf. The sponsor – e.g. for rail projects – may have to bear the costs of the project manager.

• Overriding Public Interest and Lighter Environmental Review

  Some priority projects are statutorily declared to serve an “overriding public interest” (überragendes öffentliches Interesse) that courts and authorities must weigh in the project’s favour when balancing competing interests. Furthermore, when prioritising between different priority projects, authorities – including the planning approval authority – must consider the acceleration interest of projects serving an overriding public interest. The Ministries for Defence, for Transport, and for Economic Affairs and Energy may also seek to exempt urgent projects from Environmental Impact Assessment obligations, provided they inform the European Commission.

• Digital Procedures 

  Filings and publications relating to planning approval and authorisation procedures for infrastructure projects move to a digital-by-default model under the revised Administrative Procedure Act (Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz). This extends to public participation: parties entitled to object must in principle submit their objections and comments electronically, with any other means of submission now the exception. 

Together, these mechanisms shorten the administrative timeline and narrow the scope for delaying a project through administrative litigation.

Keeping up the pace: Avoiding Deceleration and Cost Escalation in Project Execution

Accelerated permitting addresses only one bottleneck in an infrastructure project’s lifecycle. 

Once construction begins, a different source of risk takes over: cost overruns and delays. Unless a project’s contract addresses these properly, they tend to escalate into disputes rather than being resolved along the way. The Freshfields team led by Patrick Schroeder, Partner in Hamburg, has consistently seen that, in major project disputes, the parties best placed to avoid escalation are those that build dispute readiness into their contracts from the outset, rather than addressing friction points only once they have already become disputes.

Paul Roegels and Jonas Lampert explore these issues in greater detail in their article, “Kostenrisiken und Konfliktlösung bei Infrastrukturprojekten” (“Cost risks and dispute resolution in infrastructure projects”). The article outlines how price-adjustment clauses and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms can be structured to guard against cost and delay risks and avoid litigation where possible, while also analysing how parties can best position themselves for potential litigation where it is unavoidable.

The article is part of the Recht der Internationalen Wirtschaft legal journal, issue 08, pp. 473–478, and is available in German on beck-online.