The Social Democrats announce that they are submitting a bill to Parliament, according to which consumers whose rates have been inflated by the banks will be compensated by the banks without having to file individual lawsuits.
“This law regulates the compensation mechanism for credit consumers, in the situation where, as a result of the implementation of unfair competitive practices or errors in the calculation of the applied interest, during the development of the credit contract, the credit consumer has been prejudiced”it is stated in the text of the project submitted by the PSD.
The new draft law defines the right consumer “the natural person acting for purposes outside his commercial or professional activity”and the credit agreement is “the contract by which a creditor grants, promises or stipulates the possibility of granting credit to a consumer in the form of deferred payment, loan or other similar financial facilities”.
Credit institutions are also targeted, defined as “enterprise whose activity consists in attracting deposits or other repayable funds from the public and granting loans on its own account”according to the EU Regulation.
The benchmark including ROBOR is defined as “the indicator used to calculate the variable interest”and the new concept introduced is a “adjusted benchmark”which would reflect the actual value of the obligations “unaffected by anti-competitive practices or any other calculation errors”.
How to calculate the damage
The draft defines harm as “the amount representing the difference between the total cost of the credit borne by the debtor by applying the reference index and the cost recalculated by applying an adjusted reference index”.
The total cost of the loan includes “all costs, including interest, commissions, taxes and any other type of costs”.
In the situation where authorities such as the National Authority for Consumer Protection or the Competition Council find damages, the credit institutions would be obliged to: correct the errors found, recalculate the contractual obligations by applying a revised calculation formula and fully refund (…) the proven damage (…) to all affected debtors.
What consumers can do
Debtors could request the recalculation within 45 days of finding the damage, based on a “definitive administrative document”.
The credit institutions would have the obligation, within 45 days of the request, to recalculate the obligations and submit a proposal to revise the contract.
In addition, “within 15 days of establishing the damage, the credit institution is obliged to pay the amounts owed”.
Payment could be made “either by bank transfer to a separate account; or by reducing the principal balance of the loan”.
Failure to comply with the law would be sanctioned “with a fine of up to 1% of the turnover achieved in the previous financial year by the responsible credit institution”.
“In short, the law provides for the financial compensation of the harmed consumer, as a result of the manipulation of the ROBOR, through a simple and effective mediation mechanism. Practically, in the situation where a state authority, the Competition Council or ANPC, finds, as a result of the implementation of unfair competitive practices or proven errors, that credit consumers have been harmed, the banks have the obligation to correct the errors found, to recalculate the contractual obligations by applying a calculation formula revised all the contracts and to fully refund the damage proven following the investigation within 45 days of the consumer’s request. The bill, as I said, will be made public today, on which occasion I invite all parliamentarians from all political parties to sign it and support it, because, as I said in the case of the payment law, the bill has no political color, it is an act of justice that we have an obligation to we make all consumers who have been damaged as a result of this mechanism of use, constitution of the ROBOR”Zamfir explained in a press conference held at the Parliament.
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Allegations of tampering with ROBOR
We remind you that 10 banks were sanctioned by the Competition Council with total fines of 3.73 billion lei (approximately 710 million euros), following an investigation into violations of competition rules in the ROBOR setting process.
The banks participating in the setting of the ROBOR are accused of coordinating their behavior by exchanging confidential information on the quotations transmitted during the fixing procedure.
According to the authority, instead of acting independently, the banks would have adjusted their quotes according to those of their competitors, thus influencing the level of the index used to calculate interest rates for some loans. The council claims it has a body of evidence pointing to this practice and warns that even very small variations in ROBOR can have a significant financial impact on borrowers.
