The Göttingen savings bank was not allowed to terminate the account of the left-wing solidarity organisation Red Aid, a court has now confirmed in the main proceedings. The bank’s stated reasons, an increased compliance burden after US sanctions, were not convincing.

The Göttingen savings bank (Sparkasse Göttingen) was not allowed to terminate the account of Rote Hilfe (Red Aid). The Regional Court of Göttingen decided this on Thursday in the main proceedings. The intention to terminate, announced on 9 December 2025, therefore has no legal effect. The reasons asserted by the savings bank, namely a higher verification burden following US sanctions, did not convince the court.

The nationwide left-wing solidarity organisation Rote Hilfe e. V. had already won a final victory in the interim proceedings. In those, the savings bank was obliged at the beginning of the year to continue the account until a decision in the main proceedings. The savings bank appealed against this, but the Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig rejected the appeal three weeks ago: a public-law savings bank may not terminate an account without a substantive reason, it held. According to Rote Hilfe, the Regional Court “fully” endorsed this.

It is unclear whether the Göttingen savings bank will appeal against the judgment. Nobody at the branch could be reached for comment on Thursday.

US listing of “Antifa Ost” as a “terrorist organisation”

The background to the termination is a decision by the US State Department in autumn 2025 to place the so-called “Antifa Ost” on a list of foreign terrorist organisations. No organisation of this name exists in Germany, although various proceedings against anti-fascists in Germany and Budapest are being conducted under that label. There, several alleged members of “Antifa Ost” are said to have committed bodily harm against participants in the far-right “Day of Honour” in February 2023.

Rote Hilfe had repeatedly called for donations for the suspects and defendants in the “Antifa Ost complex”, including for legal and trial costs, but also to resist threatened extraditions. According to the savings bank, this led to an increased monitoring burden.

The US designation as “terrorist” has no direct legal effect in Germany. However, once “Antifa Ost” is named on a list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the US, service providers based there, such as PayPal or Visa, are obliged to comply with sanctions. This includes financially starving those listed.

According to the bank, in the interim proceedings Rote Hilfe had been classified as a higher-risk customer since 2015. The reason, it said, was that the domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) lists it as “left-wing extremist”. The Higher Regional Court countered that the savings bank had not explained comprehensibly why this risk should have increased significantly once more in December 2025, that is, after the US sanctions against “Antifa Ost” were imposed.

Criticism of “ban on associations by the back door”

Hartmut Brückner of the national executive of Rote Hilfe called the decision an important success for all those who defend themselves against politically motivated “debanking”. It remained problematic, he said, that decisions and sanctions lists from the US could exert such pressure on civil society in Germany at all.

Rote Hilfe was supported in the proceedings by the Society for Civil Rights (Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, GFF), whose lawyers represented the association in court. In the view of the civil rights organisation, what was ultimately being tried in court were the conditions under which civil society organisations can operate. Debanking such as that carried out by the Göttingen savings bank could amount to a “ban on associations by the back door”. The judgment is therefore significant beyond the specific case.

In addition to the savings bank, GLS Bank also terminated its business relationship last year with Rote Hilfe and other radical left-wing groups. After public protest, GLS Bank backed away from this. Rote Hilfe is also currently under pressure in a politically motivated campaign from the right, because Elif Eralp, the candidate for the mayoralty of Berlin after the Left Party’s election victory on 20 September, was a member until last year.

Published in German in „nd“.

Image: Simon-Martin, Sparkassen-Arena Goettingen 2018-06, CC BY-SA 4.0.