Facing climate change, biological threats and AI that move faster than legislatures, Germany uses experimental clauses with an expiry date, a clear boundary and mandatory evaluation to test rules in the real world before legislating.
A Munich official, explaining the city's driverless bus project, asked: what does it mean when the law is an experiment too?
Germany calls these Experimentierklauseln, experimental clauses: rules with an expiry date, a clear geographic or sectoral boundary and rigorous evaluation, after which the city decides whether to keep them. Hamburg let a hospital fly cancer tissue samples by drone, skipping federal aviation law for 18 months, and the results are now feeding into a federal draft.
What surprised me most is the mindset: uncertainty as an ally, and implementation first so you can find out what the policy should be.
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