Erhvervslejeloven (the Danish Commercial Leases Act)
Also known as danish commercial leases act, commercial tenancy act
Erhvervslejeloven governs the lease of commercial premises — and it sets out what a landlord has to do before a lease can be terminated for non-payment.
- Applies to
- Commercial leases
- Requires before termination
- A formal demand
- Leads to
- An eviction hearing
In practice
The order is the act’s, not the landlord’s. If the tenant does not pay, the lease cannot simply be terminated. A formal demand meeting the statutory requirements has to go out first, and the tenant must be given a period in which to pay. Only once that has passed can the lease be terminated — and only then can eviction be sought in the bailiff’s court.
It is the same logic as the reminder process, and it fails in the same way: if the demand is defective, or the period too short, the termination does not hold. The landlord is then left with premises he cannot get into and arrears that keep growing.
And eviction solves only one of the two problems. The premises come back; the money does not. The arrears have to be collected afterwards like any other claim.
Where it commonly goes wrong
- The demand is sent as an ordinary reminder. The statutory demand has its own content requirements, and a reminder does not meet them.
- Terminating and forgetting the arrears. Eviction stops the loss. It does not recover what has already been lost.