moratorium

Which translation, when

Why

An English moratorium is a named device, a statutory freeze on creditor action that can stand alone or run inside administration, and German law reaches the same protection through more than one route rather than one word. Once the Insolvenzverfahren opens, § 89 InsO bars any individual creditor from enforcing into the Masse, and § 87 InsO confines the Insolvenzgläubiger to pursuing their claims through the proceedings, so the collective process replaces the race of individual enforcement. Before opening, in the Insolvenzeröffnungsverfahren, the court may order protective measures including a stay of enforcement, § 21 Abs. 2 Nr. 3 InsO, which is where an English company might already be sheltering under a moratorium. Since 2021 a company not yet insolvent can also obtain a free-standing Stabilisierungsanordnung under the StaRUG, §§ 49 ff. StaRUG, a court-ordered Vollstreckungs- und Verwertungssperre that transposes the EU restructuring moratorium and works outside any insolvency. What German law still lacks is a single word that mirrors moratorium, and the Latinate Moratorium a machine reaches for names none of these devices, while Zahlungsaufschub and Stundung mean deferral of payment, a different idea from a freeze on enforcement. So the safe rendering points at the Vollstreckungsverbot inside insolvency or the Stabilisierungsanordnung outside it, not at a German word that merely looks like the English one.

Typical mistakes

• The German enforcement freeze sits in more than one place, § 89 InsO barring individual enforcement once the Insolvenzverfahren opens, § 21 InsO allowing a court-ordered stay beforehand, and §§ 49 ff. StaRUG offering a free-standing Stabilisierungsanordnung to a company not yet insolvent, so treating it as insolvency-only misses the StaRUG route.
• The Latinate Moratorium a machine offers is not an InsO term, and Zahlungsaufschub or Stundung mean deferral of payment, not a stay of enforcement, so neither captures the creditor freeze.
• The freeze protects the Masse and confines the Insolvenzgläubiger to the procedure, § 87 InsO, so it is a feature of the collective process, not a shield a healthy company can raise at will.

What matters

Restructuring questions that assume a moratorium can be switched on meet a split structure: the in-insolvency Vollstreckungsverbot flows from § 89 InsO, a court can order a stay beforehand, § 21 InsO, and a company not yet insolvent reaches for the StaRUG Stabilisierungsanordnung, §§ 49 ff. StaRUG. The plan built around one standalone device has to say which of these routes it means, the InsO freeze arriving with the procedure while the StaRUG stay sits before it.

Examples