“The central bank stated that the potential class actions would have a substantial impact on the banks’ financial results, with some of them set to incur more damages than the others, but the financial stability of the system would not be endangered,” official sources told Mediafax.
They said the ministry was presented with a summary of the original survey, which was commissioned by the central bank earlier this year.
According to the survey, 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.
Central bank governor Mugur Isarescu said recently that any so-called abusive clauses denounced by bank debtors are part of the loan contracts they have signed and therefore should be accepted as such, arguing that both borrowers and depositors must be protected by the law.
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.