Licensed trade business in DE
What this register publishes today, what is missing, and the smallest change that would move it up.
What was found
Germany registers more of its tradespeople than almost anywhere and lets the public check almost none of them. Every business in a licensed or licence-free trade is a compulsory member of its regional chamber and entered in the Handwerksrolle, and running a licensed trade without that entry is punishable by a fine or a trade prohibition. There is no single national lookup, because each of the regional chambers keeps its own. At least one chamber’s published service description states plainly that direct online enquiries are not possible, that single enquiries are answered by telephone, and that the enquirer must show a legitimate interest, offering the example of deciding whether to include a business in a tender. A consumer about to hand over a deposit is not obviously such an interest.
What it publishes
| Check | Answer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A public page per licence | No | Gives a reader something to look at and a checker something to archive and attest against. |
| A bulk export | No | Lets a consumer hold the whole list instead of fetching one licence at a time, and lets anyone hash it. |
| Machine readable | No | A CSV or JSON rather than a page built for a browser. Decides whether checking can be automated at all. |
| Signed | No | Makes the file impossible to forge or mirror convincingly. Nothing reaches grade A without it. |
The next step
Publish anything at all
There is no public way to check a licence in this jurisdiction, so a client has nothing to compare a claim against. The first step is a page per licence at an address that does not change. A bulk file can come later.
A grade describes a register, not the authority behind it and not the quality of its supervision. An authority can run an excellent register and still sit at grade D because it is a search form.
If this row is wrong, it gets corrected with the correction published beside it. The index is useful only if it can be argued with. Tell the lab.