“Those clauses, abusive or not, represent contracts signed by the people who took out loans. And when you sign something, you commit to that thing,” Isarescu told a news conference.
He reiterated a recent statement that the law should protect both borrowers and depositors.
According to a survey from the central bank, Romanian lenders are likely to incur aggregate losses of some 5 billion lei (over EUR1.1 billion) following the potential implementation of a regulation allowing collective lawsuits against banks over abusive loan contract clauses.
Romania is one of the few countries in Europe that doesn’t have a personal bankruptcy legislation, leaving over-indebted consumers unprotected against creditors, a report commissioned by the European Commission showed in April.
The authorities in Bucharest have postponed twice the introduction of a new stipulation to the Code of Civil Procedure that would allow consumers and the consumer protection authority to file class actions against service providers, including banks, over abusive clauses.
The latest deadline for the introduction of the stipulation was set to October this year.
Should the new stipulation be added to the Civil Procedure Code, the banks would be forced to modify all contract clauses that might be considered abusive.
Additionally, the new measure might extend to various types of litigations between consumers and service providers, opening the way to possibly thousands of lawsuits by disgruntled consumers.
The International Monetary Fund said recently that Romania’s planned amendments to the Civil Procedure Code could undermine financial stability and the norms should be carefully balanced so both depositors and debtors are protected.