Last year, the Federal Court of Justice presented the banking industry and its customers with a task that should not be underestimated.
He has declared the banks' previous practice of interpreting silence as consent to increases in fees for current accounts to be inadmissible.
But as clear as this judgment was, the consequences are still controversial today.
The district court of Stuttgart has now ruled that threats from banks that they would terminate customers' accounts if they do not waive the repayment of previous account management fees are not inadmissible, at least under competition law.
The court emphasizes that it did not itself declare the dismissal to be permissible.
All of this is still being negotiated before higher authorities.
Nevertheless, it should be a signal to the banks.
Many institutes pay back the fees from previous ineffective fee increases when bank customers come with lawyers.
However, the institutes are trying to keep the number of these cases low.
Some use the threat to terminate the account.
That shouldn't be any less now.
If it is only a question of the fact that a bank now needs the customer's approval of its general terms and conditions in order to be able to work at all, this is understandable.
However, where the intention is to deprive bank customers of their supreme court-confirmed repayment claims, this cannot be in the sense of the law.