Bank holiday

Bank holidays or bank holidays ( English bank-holidays , rarely banking holidays ) are the additional, possibly by statutory holiday regulations different days on which banks no banking transactions handled. The bank holiday is the complementary term to the bank working days .

public holidays

Under a holiday ( english : holiday ) is generally understood a recurring annually, usually non-working day, which often religious in origin, but also secular character can have.

In many states, a distinction is made between national holidays, which apply uniformly across the country, and regional holidays, which are only recognized as a holiday in a certain region, while in the rest of the country a normal working day exists.

Germany

Sundays and public holidays are regarded as "days of rest and spiritual exhilaration" and are guaranteed by the constitution ( Art. 140 Basic Law , Art. 139 WRV ). Public holidays are generally non-working for employees ( Section 9 of the Working Hours Act ), the federal state holiday laws stipulate general rest periods.

National Holidays

There are nationally uniform public holidays ( January 1st , Good Friday , Easter Monday , May 1st , Whit Monday , Ascension Day , Day of German Unity , 1st and 2nd Christmas Holidays ) on which banks in Germany do not work either. In addition, there are bank holidays ( Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve ) on which credit institutions are closed, while otherwise there is a normal or restricted working day.

However, the major and individual payment transaction systems ( TARGET2 , house bank procedure (HBV)) that are relevant for credit institutions are only closed on public holidays that are defined as TARGET holidays by the ESCB ( European System of Central Banks ) (January 1st, Good Friday , Easter Monday, May 1st, Christmas Day and Boxing Day). A discrepancy already arises here, as TARGET works on Whit Monday, Ascension Day and the Day of German Unity.

Regional holidays

Regional holidays are those holidays that are limited to a certain geographic region (state or even municipalities of a state), while normal working day regulations apply for the rest of a state. Regional holidays are Epiphany , Corpus Christi , Assumption Day , Reformation Day , Repentance and Prayer Day , All Saints Day and the Augsburg Peace Festival .

On a regional holiday, all payment transaction procedures (TARGET2, HBV, EMZ and SEPA-Clearer of the EMZ " Electronic Bulk Payment Transactions ") of the Deutsche Bundesbank are in operation nationwide. In the case of regional holiday regulations, the affected branches of the Bundesbank are closed, paper-based deliveries / deliveries or data carrier deliveries / deliveries are not possible there - in contrast to deliveries / deliveries via remote data transmission (EDI). For accounts that are kept at a Bundesbank branch that is closed due to the regional public holiday, special features must be observed, which the Bundesbank has summarized in an overview. Whether the Bundesbank makes credits or debits depends on whether the branch is in the area of a regional holiday or not.

Fake holidays

In addition, festive events take place in certain regions at which work may be suspended or restricted. However, since these are not public holidays stipulated by the legislator, one speaks in this case of "bogus public holidays" or "traditional days". Customs are certain social behaviors, traditions and customs that are usually voluntarily accepted and observed by the majority of a society. As an “integral part” of society / culture, it is respected in everyday life.

These include a .:

Carnival, Carnival and Carnival : Carnival Monday and Carnival / Mardi Gras (the Ash Wednesday then is the seventh Wednesday before Easter)
Thanksgiving Day : usually the first Sunday in October
Martin's Day : November 11th
Nicholas : December 6th

Shrove Monday has established itself as the only bank holiday from the category of fake holidays in the carnival strongholds (Cologne, Mainz, Düsseldorf). Banks in these regions then do not work, so that bank holidays can also be used here. However, since work is being carried out outside of these regions and all payment transaction systems are in operation, the branch banks concerned must ensure internal operational readiness.

Austria

The national holidays in Austria also apply to the banking sector. Austrian banks are generally closed on Saturdays and Sundays. In the collective agreement for employees of banks and bankers, Holy Saturday, Pentecost Saturday and December 24 are set as bank holidays. In contrast to Germany, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in Austria - as TARGET2 is closed on this day, however, it is accompanied by "separate processing modalities for payment transactions".

International

The EU-wide payment system TARGET2 does not work all year round, but takes into account a few bank holidays. "TARGET2 days" do not include Saturday , Sunday , New Year's Day (January 1st), Good Friday , Easter Monday , Labor Day (May 1st) and Christmas Day (December 25th and 26th). In the relationship between the customer and the bank, banking days are all weekdays with the exception of Saturday and Sunday and the respective national and regional holidays. If a payment is due on Whit Monday, TARGET2 settlement ( Interbank Settlement Date ) also takes place on Whit Monday (not a TARGET2 holiday); Since this is a bank holiday in Germany, the customer will not be charged until the following Tuesday. This has led to the development of the term business day in international syndicate and contractual practice and in international credit transactions .

United Kingdom and Ireland

LIBOR bank holidays include January 1st , Good Friday , Easter Monday , May Day (first Monday in May), Spring Bank Holiday (last Monday in May), Summer Bank Holiday (last Monday in August), Christmas Day (December 25th ) ) and Boxing Day (December 26th).

The following bank holidays apply in the UK and Ireland :

UK and Ireland bank holidays		restrictions
January 1st	New Year
January 2nd		only Scotland
17. March	St. Patrick's Day	Northern Ireland and Ireland only
variable	Good Friday
variable	May Day	first and last Monday in May (Spring Bank Holiday)
variable	Easter Monday	not in Scotland
variable	Whit Monday	Republic of Ireland only
July 12	Battle of the Boyne (Orangemen's day)	Northern Ireland only
last Monday in August	Summer holiday	in Scotland and the Republic of Ireland: first Monday (and last Monday in October)
6th of December	Independence day	Republic of Ireland only
25 December	Christmas
December 26th	Boxing Day

United States

In the US, banks do not operate on Thanksgiving Day , Veterans Day , Columbus Day , Labor Day , Independence Day, and President's Day except Saturday, Sunday, Easter, and Christmas .

Holiday impact

Internationally, the TARGET holidays have established themselves as bank holidays. This means that payments worldwide that have TARGET activated in their payment chain do not take place or are forwarded . There are numerous national or regional deviations from this TARGET regulation. On the one hand, it can happen that there are fewer bank holidays than the TARGET regulation provides, on the other hand there are numerous national or regional special regulations that stipulate more bank holidays than TARGET. If you work in a state or region on a day that is considered a TARGET holiday, no TARGET transactions can be carried out there on that day. Conversely, it is a bank holiday if a credit institution is closed on a TARGET working day.

Basically, there is a holiday regulation and thus rest from work in the place where the holiday is protected. Accordingly, if a credit institution has several branches, the working regulations can vary on a specific day. If there is a regional holiday at a certain place of work, work is suspended here, while other branches have a normal working day. This also applies at the international level.

Situation in Germany

In the transfer right in the German Civil Code (BGB), “ bank business days” are those working days (except Saturdays) on which all banks involved in the transfer are usually open. According to this, a business day is any day on which the bank involved in the execution of a payment transaction maintains the business operations necessary for the execution of payment transactions.

National or regional public holidays at one of the banks intermediary in the transfer chain do not count when calculating the execution period ( Section 675n (1) BGB). For this reason, the one-day execution period for transfers only begins on a bank business day. Conversely, those days are therefore to be regarded as bank holidays on which a bank involved in the transfer is usually closed. Therefore, national or regional public holidays do not count towards the execution period.

history

The term bank holiday goes back to the English equivalent of bank holiday . In 1871 the Bank Holidays Act was passed in England , which provided for 4 bank holidays for England / Ireland / Wales and 5 (partly different) bank holidays for Scotland . The bank holidays legally introduced in 1871 are Easter Monday and Whit Monday as well as the 26th (or, if this is a Sunday, the 27th) December and the first Monday in August. The Summer Bank Holiday was moved from the first Monday in August to the last Monday in August in 1965. Exactly a century later, the Banking and Financial Dealings Act came in 1971 , which still regulates bank holidays in Great Britain today .

In the USA, banks are closed on so-called federal holidays , while here the term bank holiday is associated with the compulsory closure of credit institutions, for example under the Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933. On March 5, 1933, the newly inaugurated US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a four-day bank holiday with the help of Congress. The reason for this was and is that the banks do not have to make payments for an extra day (an economic advantage for the financial institutions).

In Germany, too, the term was initially associated with banking and stock market crises. For example, an ordinance of the Reich President on bank holidays of July 13, 1931 provided that the Reich government could determine bank holidays in connection with the crisis at the Darmstädter und Nationalbank KGaA.

Even today, bank holidays are one of many options for action in banking or stock market crises. Then it is “ordered bank holidays”, ie the closure of individual or all bank branches on days that are actually considered banking days. For this purpose, BaFin is authorized in accordance with Section 46 (1) No. 5 KWG to order the temporary closure of an institution for customer traffic.

literature

Bank holidays as a way out . In: Die Zeit , No. 16/1967

Web links

Wiktionary: Bank holiday - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

legal holidays
Website with current international bank holidays
Trading calendar of Deutsche Börse AG, Frankfurt am Main

Individual evidence

↑ Veronika Jüttemann (ed.): Ewige Mome. An interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of time (= studying in old age , volume 11). Waxmann, Münster a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-8309-2011-3 , p. 127.

↑ about § 3 Lower Saxony law on public holidays

↑ Strictly speaking, “national holidays” are regulated by state laws, which are, however, coordinated. Only the Day of German Unity was exceptionally regulated nationally within the framework of a state treaty (Article 2, Paragraph 2 of the Unification Treaty ); see article Holidays in Germany .

↑ Deutsche Bundesbank, Notes on the processing of cashless payment transactions at the Deutsche Bundesbank in connection with national and regional holidays in December 2009. ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 163 kB) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 3. @1@ 2

↑ Information on handling cashless payment transactions at the Deutsche Bundesbank in connection with national and regional holidays , December 2009 ( memento of the original from June 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 163 kB) Deutsche Bundesbank, p. 14. @1@ 2

↑ ^a ^b Bank Holidays. Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), accessed on April 13, 2020 .

↑ Collective agreement for employees of banks and bankers in the version dated April 1, 2019. §25 (5). Retrieved April 13, 2020 .

^ Georg Wittmann, Ernst Stahl: E-commerce guidelines . 2012, p. 7–31 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

↑ An identical definition is contained in Anglo-American contracts: " [...] means a day (other than a Saturday or Sunday) on which banks are open for general business in London (New York) / (and which is a TARGET Day) / (and a LIBOR Day). ”

↑ Bank Holidays . In: Brockhaus' Kleines Konversations-Lexikon . 5th edition. Volume 1, F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1911, pp. 148-149 .

^ Ordinance of July 13, 1931. Document archive

[1] Veronika Jüttemann (ed.): Ewige Mome. An interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenon of time (= studying in old age , volume 11). Waxmann, Münster a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-8309-2011-3 , p. 127.

[2] ut § 3 Lower Saxony law on public holidays

[3] Strictly speaking, “national holidays” are regulated by state laws, which are, however, coordinated. Only the Day of German Unity was exceptionally regulated nationally within the framework of a state treaty (Article 2, Paragraph 2 of the Unification Treaty ); see article Holidays in Germany .