The "Working Group on Participation", set up by the Berlin Advisory Council for Integration, presented a report in 2009, on the basis of which the Advisory Council recommended the drafting of a Participation Act. The Act was developed and entered into force in December 2010, thus pioneering the field of State Participation Acts. According to § 1, the purpose of the law is to strengthen equal rights for people with migrant background and to eliminate discrimination. In order to make integration successful, it should "offer the people with a migration background an opportunity to participate". The second major objective was to put the institutions of integration policy on a legal basis.

The Act obliges the Berlin administration, including all authorities, corporations, institutions, foundations, and state-owned companies. It also applies if the state holds or establishes legal entities under private law.

Positive Action is not explicitly mentioned in the Act. § 4 (4) formulates the goal of increasing the proportion of people with a migration background in public service. However, the wording used there does not justify a concrete practice of preferential employment on the basis of a migration background. The Migration Council therefore demanded the formulation: "Positive Action under the AGG must be implemented here.”
The Senate's statement on the Act reads that "The establishment of a quota and the inclusion of regulations on Positive Action under the AGG have already been extensively discussed during the drafting phase of the Act and have been rejected on the basis of legal and fundamental considerations".
Nevertheless, § 4 (4) and (5) aim at strengthening the employment of people with a migration background. Subsection 4 aims at increasing the proportion of employees with a migration background according to their proportion in society. This wording indicates a "soft" target and thus represents a form of Positive Action. Subsection 5 states that "the Senate shall set targets for increasing the proportion (...)".

Each district office is free to decide whether it wants to apply Positive Action measures and to which extent they should be applied. In its statement on the implementation of the PartIntG, the Tempelhof-Schöneberg District Office states: "[The overall strategy for intercultural opening] comprises a kind of catalogue of measures which the individual offices and departments can use to promote their own intercultural opening in accordance with individual needs and prerequisites and also to set different priorities.”