Regional principle
The regional principle is a regulation derived from German savings bank law and history within the savings bank association . According to this, the business area of a savings bank generally includes the area of its municipal sponsor. This should also ensure that the savings banks do not compete with one another. Also, credit unions submit to a similar regional principle under.
Sparkasse branches may also only be operated in the area of the local authority. The municipal area reforms carried out several times in Germany in the past have therefore already led to transfers from branches to another savings bank .
In the XX main report, the Monopolies Commission spoke out in favor of an antitrust review of banking competition and in favor of the abolition of the regional principle, especially for the savings banks. The reason for the criticism at the savings banks is that the regional principle is standardized in the state laws as a statutory compulsory cartel. According to the Monopolies Commission, there is no competitive justification for the regional principle.
What speaks in favor of the regional principle is that it represents a formative regulatory principle for decentralized banking organizations. For savings banks, the regional principle results from the public mandate and from the institute's sphere of activity, which is restricted by public law, and for cooperatives from the funding mandate. Since the members of credit unions are usually anchored regionally, their sphere of activity is naturally also regionally limited. With regard to the risk, the regional principle is to be assessed positively. With its judgment of January 19, 2001, the Federal Constitutional Court decided for cooperatives that the cooperatives are characterized by a special objective and can have their own structural features. It is undisputed that the regional principle is a defining structural feature of both banking organizations.
Politicians have clearly spoken out against the abolition of the regional principle.
The regional principle is weakened by mergers. The direct banking operated by the savings banks and credit unions also leads to a partial replacement of the regional principle. The direct banking subsidiaries founded by the savings banks (for example, Frankfurter Sparkasse in 1822direkt ) operate nationwide using the newer telephone and Internet sales channels.
literature
- Monopoly commission; XX main report, Chapter VI, Berlin 2014.
- Volker Schepers: Internet banking and regional principle under savings bank law (paperback) Deutscher Gemeindeverlag; Edition: 1st edition (June 5, 2003), ISBN 3555013084
- Urban Bacher (2016): On the regional principle in German credit unions, in: Taisch / Jungmeister / Gernet (Ed.), XVIII International Conference on Cooperative Studies IGT 2016 in Lucerne (pp. 26-37).
- Aßmann et al: Regionalprinzip bei Sparkassen, in: bank und markt 9/2014, pp. 16–24.