According to information from the FAZ, the second court in Germany has already declared negative interest rates at a bank to be inadmissible.

After the Berlin district court, which overturned a regulation by Sparda-Bank Berlin last year, the Düsseldorf district court has now declared the negative interest rates of the Volksbank Rhein-Lippe to be illegal (file number 12 O 34/21).

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

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The Federal Association of Consumers, VZBV for short, had sued. The Volksbank wanted to levy a so-called custody fee of 0.5 percent per year on the current account for deposits of more than 10,000 euros from new customers. The District Court of Düsseldorf ruled that the custody fee disadvantaged customers and was inappropriate.

The court ruled that a bank should not charge a custody fee in addition to account management fees.

This is not compatible with the legal regulations on the giro contract.

The custody of money is a prerequisite for the agreed payment services and thus immanent to the giro contract.

It is not about an additional special service that a customer can accept or not.

The bank also already charges an account management fee for its checking accounts.

An additional storage fee would mean that consumers would have to pay twice as much for a uniform service. 

Sparda-Bank Berlin appeals

The court thus tended to agree with the Berlin Regional Court's view, against which the Sparda-Bank Berlin has appealed.

The Düsseldorf verdict is not yet final either, consumer advocates appealed there because they are not satisfied with everything.

A third verdict before the district court of Cologne ended with a partial success for consumer advocates, against which an appeal was also filed.

It is possible that the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) will have to decide on the fundamental questions at some point.

David Bode from the VZBV called the judgments a "stage victory": "We want to have the legal situation clarified in principle." In older decisions in Tübingen and Leipzig, the courts had not fundamentally rejected negative interest rates.

In its decision, the Berlin Regional Court based its decision on the legal definition of the loan agreement in the German Civil Code, among other things.

It describes the direction in which the interest has to flow, namely from the borrower to the lender.

The same applies to deposits by savers at a bank, so the bank cannot simply demand that bank customers pay negative interest.

However, this legal position is controversial.

Some banks are apparently already discussing whether they should make provisions for possible repayments of negative interest.

555 banks with negative interest rates for private customers

According to surveys by the consumer platform Biallo, 555 banks in Germany are now also charging private customers negative interest rates.

580 banks have already done this for corporate customers.

In the past year alone, the number of these banks has more than doubled.

At the same time, the allowances from which negative interest is charged continue to fall.

The EUR 10,000 of the Volksbank Rhein-Lippe regulation that has now been overturned is a relatively low exempt amount.

Many banks have arrived at 50,000 or 25,000 euros.

However, some banks also charge negative interest from the very first euro.