Legal protection afforded to residential tenants during the corona crisis extended

31 March 2021

With the New Year fast approaching and given that the "statutory deferral" of residential rents – introduced in the spring of 2020 in the wake of the exceptional circumstances triggered by the coronavirus – was due to expire on 31 December 2020, the legislator has now adopted an amendment to the 2nd COVID-19 Judiciary Accompanying Act. Specifically, lessors will have to wait even longer before being able to bring an action to enforce rent instalments that fell due between 1 April and 30 June 2020; namely, this will not be possible until 31 March 2021. It was originally envisaged that enforcement before the courts would be deferred until 1 January 2021. Furthermore, the legislation also extends the possibility for facilitating the postponement of eviction proceedings until 30 June 2021.

It is worth noting that lessors continue to be prohibited from making use of the security deposit in this regard. Thus, as had been expected, the legislative interventions tend to be to the detriment of lessors.

As before, however, these special regulations only pertain to rents for residential premises; they will have no effect on rents for commercial premises and leases – even in the future.