Overview
- The Federal Court of Justice held oral arguments in Karlsruhe on Thursday and will announce its ruling at a later date.
- The case stems from an OLG Cologne judgment that ordered immediate deletion of paid debt entries and awarded damages, which Schufa is appealing.
- Schufa’s industry Code of Conduct, approved by Hesse’s data protection authority, permits storing settled payment defaults for up to 36 months, with a 18‑month deletion rule for certain one‑off late payments cleared within 100 days.
- The judges examined whether EU case law on insolvency-data retention and the rules of the public debtor register should shape limits for private databases.
- Schufa says about 564,000 people would see deletions if it loses the case, while it argues that shorter retention would weaken credit-risk assessments and could lead to fewer loans or higher borrowing costs.