The CJUE decides on Bondora cases
31 DIC 2019 - 09:45 CET
The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled on the Bondora cases C-453/18 and C-494/18 in its decision of December 19, 2019. The Court answer two preliminary rulings referred before the CJEU by the Courts of First Instance No. 11 of Vigo and No. 20 of Barcelona in relation to contracts concluded between consumers located in Spain and the Bondora Company, based in Estonia.
The requests have been made in two European order for payment proceedings between Bondora AS and two Spanish consumers concerning the recovery by Bondora of claims arising from loan contracts.
These requests for a preliminary ruling relate to the interpretation of Article 6(1) and Article 7(1) of Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts, Article 7(2)(d) and (e) of Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 creating a European order for payment procedure and Article 38 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and to the validity of Regulation No 1896/2006.
The CJEU has ruled once published the conclusions of the Advocate General, Eleanor Sharpston, according to which the judge would be entitled to request a copy of the contract with the sole purpose of verifying the existence of terms contrary to consumers’ rights. This, according to articles 6 and 7 of Council Directive 93/13 of 5 April 1993, on unfair terms in consumers contracts, in relation to article 38 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and to Article 6.1 of the Treaty on European Union.
In that sense, the CJEU (First Chamber) rules that:
Article 7(2)(d) and (e) of Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 creating a European order for payment procedure and Article 6(1) and Article 7(1) of Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts, as interpreted by the Court and read in the light of Article 38 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as allowing a ‘court’, within the meaning of that regulation, seized in the context of a European order for payment procedure, to request from the creditor additional information relating to the terms of the agreement relied on in support of the claim at issue, in order to carry out an ex officio review of the possible unfairness of those terms and, consequently, that they preclude national legislation which declares the additional documents provided for that purpose to be inadmissible.
Picture credits: European Union flag. Public domain. Source: Pxhere.
