International

How France and Poland Disclose Asbestos — and Why Germany Doesn’t

In France, every building constructed before the asbestos ban must carry an asbestos register. In Poland, failing to report contamination is a criminal offence. Germany has neither — and Berlin’s tenants live with the consequences.

The same EU directive, three different outcomes

France, Poland and Germany are all EU Member States. All three transposed the same EU asbestos directive into national law. All three banned the use of new asbestos in the late 1990s. Yet for tenants and homeowners, the practical experience could hardly be more different.

The difference is not the EU framework. The difference is whether each Member State built additional national transparency rules on top of the directive — rules the directive itself does not require. (For background on the EU framework, see our analysis of EU Directive 2023/2668 and what it does not do for tenants.)

France: knowledge is mandatory

Since 2002, every building in France constructed before the asbestos ban must have a Dossier Technique Amiante (DTA) — a technical asbestos register. The DTA is produced by certified inspectors. It documents whether and where asbestos is built into the building, the condition of the material, and what action is required. The register must be presented at sale, rental, and renovation. It is publicly accessible.

The principle is straightforward: if you own a building, you must know what is built into it — and you must share that knowledge. The owner is obliged to actively look for asbestos. Not only when a tenant asks. Not only when someone wants to renovate. As a default obligation.

For a tenant in Berlin, a system like this would have meant: before signing the lease, a document identifying the asbestos-containing floor tiles and the black adhesive beneath them. Renovations without protective measures would never have happened in the first place.

Poland: failure to report is a criminal offence

Poland took a different route — through reporting obligations and criminal liability. Every owner of a property containing asbestos must register it with their municipality. The municipalities feed into a central database, the Baza Azbestowa. It is publicly searchable. Anyone can look up which buildings are contaminated and at what urgency level.

Owners who fail to report are committing a criminal offence. In parallel, the state runs subsidy programmes for remediation — the public sector contributes financially when owners act. The system combines transparency with incentive and sanction.

Applied to Berlin: the state-owned landlord at the centre of our criminal case investigation has known in writing since 2000 that 14,400 of its apartments contained asbestos-bearing floor tiles — the figure then-state-secretary Frank Bielka confirmed in parliamentary record Drs. 14/219 of 1 April 2000. By December 2025, the figure had risen to 23,883 confirmed or suspected (Drs. 19/25 368). Under Polish law, this information would have been in a public database for over two decades. Any prospective tenant could check, before signing, whether their flat is affected.

Germany: the National Asbestos Dialogue

Germany has neither a mandatory asbestos register nor a reporting obligation for property owners. Building owners are not required to systematically check for asbestos. The Hazardous Substances Ordinance regulates work on asbestos at construction sites — but it does not require an owner to know whether their building contains the material in the first place.

Since 2016, Germany has held a National Asbestos Dialogue, initiated by the federal labour and building ministries. Expectations were high. Results were not. Sven Leistikow, a Berlin tenancy-law attorney, described the dialogue in the ARD Kontraste broadcast of 16 January 2020 as “completely without result” and as “deliberate delay”.

Tenants were not invited. Leistikow himself had written a letter with concrete proposals at the start of the process — and never received a reply. In the broadcast he put it concisely: “Those affected should have had a seat at the table."

Germany 2025: the missing investigation duty

In December 2025, a revised German Hazardous Substances Ordinance entered into force, implementing EU Directive 2023/2668. Work on asbestos-containing materials — including in lower-exposure tasks at expected fibre concentrations below 10,000 per cubic metre — is now subject to permit. There are transition deadlines — until December 2026 for permits, until December 2027 for the technical qualification of workers. A step in the right direction for occupational safety.

What the revision does not include: an investigation obligation for building owners. An earlier draft had provided for it. The provision was removed during consultation. A property owner still does not have to know whether their building contains asbestos. They only have to be careful if they happen to find out, and then commission construction work.

In France, the question would not arise. The owner would already know.

What Germany does differently

The underlying problem in Germany is not lack of knowledge. The Berlin state-owned landlord knew. The Berlin Senate knew. It is written in parliamentary records, in internal documents, in PwC-audited financial statements where asbestos is identified as a material business risk. The problem is that there is no mechanism that brings this knowledge to the people living in the buildings.

France and Poland chose different systems. One emphasises expert reports and transparency. The other emphasises reporting duties and criminal sanctions. They have one thing in common: they compel owners to share what they know. In Germany, it remains the owner’s choice whether to inform tenants. Berlin’s state-owned housing company has, since 2000, chosen not to — and even a criminal investigation produced no consequence.

The pattern is consistent across decades, across companies, and — the EU comparison makes clear — not inevitable. It is a policy choice. Other Member States have made a different one.

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