According to its own information, the credit bureau has deleted the entries of around 250,000 consumers who have gone through personal bankruptcy. Against the background of ongoing legal proceedings, the credit agency had announced that it would shorten the storage period of the entries from three years to six months. The project has now been implemented, as the credit bureau announced on request.
"For most of the 250,000 consumers, the credit rating improves by shortening the storage period," said Schufa board member Ole Schröder. A good credit rating (also called creditworthiness) can be important, among other things, for the conclusion of rental agreements.
Consumer bankruptcy allows private individuals to free themselves from their debts, even if they cannot repay everything. In the end, there is the so-called discharge of residual debt. The information will be published on an official website for six months. The credit bureau and other credit agencies collect these announcements and store them for three years. There is a dispute in the courts as to whether this is still permissible. Since May 2018, a new data protection law has been in force in the European Union.
Against this background, the credit bureau had announced that it would shorten the storage period and implement this by the end of April. In the future, the information on a discharge of residual debt will be automatically deleted after six months, according to the credit bureau. Only new debts that had not been cancelled by the discharge of residual debt remained in place.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) are currently dealing with the question of the storage period. The BGH would like to wait for clarification by the ECJ. In mid-March, the responsible Advocate General of the ECJ had expressed himself very critically of the previous practice in two credit bureau cases from Germany: The discharge of residual debt should enable those affected to participate in economic life again - but this is thwarted by the long storage. The ECJ judges often agree with the Advocate General's assessment.