Valencian Judges Association Jueces para la Democracia considers that it is needed a reform with retroactive effects: Banks cannot be benefitted at the expense of lifelong debts for citizens.
Banks need to acknowledge their liabilities regarding the financial and economic crisis and therefore the closure of the debt through the dation in payment process (giving houses to the Bank) is a matter of Justice.
Social circumstances and consideration to individual people have made Judges start passing new decisions in Spain by which giving the house to the Bank extinguishes the debt. First Court decision was passed by Navarre Court in January.
ADICAE, the association of users of Banks, Saving Banks and Insurance Companies is fighting hard for Users rights to be heard. They are setting forty informative tables in 28 provinces of 15 autonomous communities for the support of citizenship.
Just in Valencia region more than 50.000 people have lost their homes during the last four years due to the impossibility of meeting the mortgage loan.
Lawyers, Economists and Judges have a beautiful role to play in this battle: good lawsuits well argumented and defended, probably with econometrics studies attached will make Judges to see clear how the whole burden of irresponsible credit activities and obscene past and present benefits by Banks cannot become the way to kill the life or families and people by devastating their economies.
In this sense it is good that Consumers Law is a consolidated discipline in our modern legal orders by which the weak party within a commercial transaction have a set of assumptions and privileges on his favor. A market which is respectful towards consumers rights become humanized and balanced for the benefit of all, for the benefit of the market itself too. It is a win-win discipline.
In equity and justice I can see someone being liable before his creditor with all his goods (present and future) if the creditor was completely foreign to the creation and promotion of an irresponsible credit object and the debtor was fully aware of all the risks and consequences.
But….if the creditor, being the professional party lent without the required responsibility (without paying attention to risks, making the credit object something intrinsically and potentially impossible, without meeting the required standards of professional diligence and serious balance of benefits/risk), the consumer, who is the weak, non-professional and inexperienced part needs to be covered by the standards of Consumers Law and protection.
New Laws on financial consumer protection should also include some retroactive measures for past irresponsible credits (for instance mortgages of more than the 60-70% of the value) inspired by principles of Consumers Law and classic legal categories such as equity, proportionality, ad impossibilia nemo tenetur…. At the end of the day, the Sources of the Spanish Law order are Law, Uses and General Principles of Law.
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