The charges are valid for Cirrus (and Maestro, Plus and other similar brands). They're associated with using ATM or debit cards on the interbank network, but not credit cards. Even using a card issued in the EU in another EU country (using a different currency) incurs the fee. You can be charged a surcharge fee by the ATM owner, or a transaction fee charged by the card issuer (or both) for conducting a transaction outside of the issuers own network of machines. It's not against any of MasterCard's or Visa's rules to charge the fees. That's not to say that they aren't excessive though...