Cyprus Statutory legal interest (δικαστικό επιτόκιο)

What this value means

Cyprus has NO general civil legal interest that runs automatically on an unpaid debt. Interest arises only where a contract or a specific statute provides for it, or through the court: under section 33(1) of the Courts of Justice Law 14/1960 the court awards interest at the agreed or statutory rate from the day it became due, and under section 33(2) every judgment — including the costs element — carries this statutory rate from THE DATE THE ACTION WAS FILED (not from the date the debt fell due, and not from judgment) until full payment. Section 33(2) states 5.5% on its face, but section 33(4)(a) lets the Minister of Finance revise the figure by order published in the Official Gazette, and that order 'ισχύει μέχρι την έκδοση νέου διατάγματος' — it stands until replaced. The current order, Κ.Δ.Π. 374/2025, sets 4.00% from 1 January 2026. METHOD, section 33(4)(b): the Minister takes the twelve-month weighted average of the ECB main refinancing rate as it stood at the end of each month and adds an adjustment margin which 'σε καμιά περίπτωση δεν μπορεί να υπερβεί τις 5 εκατοστιαίες μονάδες' (may never exceed 5 percentage points) — so the figure is a discretionary annual judgement, not a formula, and must be read from each year's order rather than derived. NO COMPOUNDING: section 33(3) denies any power to award interest on interest. WIDELY REPEATED STALE FIGURE: the EU e-Justice portal still gives Cyprus's rate as 2% — that is out of date; the ministerial orders ran 5.5% (2008), 4% (from 2015) and have moved since, with 4.00% current for 2026. TWO SEPARATE REGIMES, NEITHER OF THEM THIS ONE: (1) B2B commercial late payment is governed by Ο περί της Καταπολέμησης των Καθυστερήσεων Πληρωμών στις Εμπορικές Συναλλαγές Νόμος (Late Payment Directive), served separately as this API's late-payment-interest product; (2) debts owed by or to the Republic run on the ενιαίο δημόσιο επιτόκιο υπερημερίας under Ν. 167(Ι)/2006, fixed by a different ministerial order each December for the whole of the following year (art. 4(1)) with its own margin cap of four percentage points — and art. 2 of that Law expressly carves the commercial late-payment interest out of its scope. Retrieval note: gov.cy returns 403 to automated fetchers, and the gazette PDFs of the orders are scanned images with no text layer — they must be opened in a real browser and read as images. NEXT FIXING: an order for 2027 is expected in the Official Gazette in December 2026; if none issues, Κ.Δ.Π. 374/2025 continues in force by its own terms.

Get it programmatically

curl https://euroref.dev/v1/cy/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://euroref.dev/v1/cy/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/cy/statutory-interest

Other Cyprus series: Policy interest rate · Value added tax (ΦΠΑ) · VAT registration threshold · National minimum wage · Public holidays · Consumer price index (annual inflation) · Corporate income tax · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax · Statutory social-insurance contributions · ECB main refinancing operations rate (fixed rate) · Late-payment interest (EU Late Payment Directive)

The same figure elsewhere: Czech Republic · Denmark · Estonia · Finland · France · all 34