Latvia Statutory legal interest (likumiskie procenti, Civillikums 1765)

What this value means

This is the GENERAL CIVIL rate: six per cent per annum, applying wherever the parties fixed no rate and wherever a statute simply directs that 'likumiskie procenti' be calculated. The six per cent figure itself is unchanged from the 1937 Civil Law; the article's present wording dates from the amendments in force on 1 January 2014, which added the commercial paragraphs below. DO NOT USE FOR COMMERCIAL SUPPLY, SALE OR SERVICES DEBTS: the second paragraph of the same article sets a different and much higher figure — 'astoņi procentpunkti virs procentu pamatlikmes gadā' (eight percentage points above the base rate per year) — for late payment of a money debt agreed as consideration under a contract for the delivery of goods, for purchase, or for the provision of services. That is Latvia's commercial likumiskie procenti, served separately as this API's late-payment-interest product. The base rate is defined in the third paragraph as the marginal rate the ECB applied in its last main refinancing operations before the first calendar day of the relevant half-year, and is then applied for the following six months — a half-yearly snapshot, unlike this flat 6%. CONSUMER CARVE-OUT: in contractual relations in which a consumer participates, the second paragraph itself sends the rate back to six per hundred per year, so a consumer debtor on a supply or services contract pays 6%, not base plus eight. ULTRA ALTERUM TANTUM APPLIES IN LATVIA (art. 1763): interest stops accruing (1) once the amount of unpaid interest reaches the size of the principal, and (2) when insolvency proceedings are opened over the debtor's property. This ceiling is real and is missed constantly on long-running Latvian claims. LIMITED COMPOUNDING (art. 1765 fourth paragraph): interest is calculated on the principal alone, but where at least a year's interest goes unpaid, the creditor may demand legal interest on that outstanding interest for that period; art. 1766 also allows fresh interest where a separate promissory note is issued for unpaid interest. Agreed rates are otherwise free (art. 1764), subject to the rule that disproportionate interest contrary to fair dealing practice is unlawful. NEXT FIXING: none — this is a statutory constant with no reference rate and no setter; it changes only by amendment of the Civil Law.

Get it programmatically

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

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

The same figure elsewhere: Lithuania · Luxembourg · Malta · Netherlands · Norway · all 34