Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the implementation of Directive 2008/48/EC on credit agreements for consumers

More than twenty years after the adoption of the first Directive on consumer credit in 1987, Directive 2008/48/EC (Consumer Credit Directive – CCD) was adopted and Member States had to transpose it by 11 June 2010. Since then, the Commission has adopted Directive 2011/90/EU in order to ensure that the assumptions for the calculation of the annual percentage rate of charge (APR) more accurately reflect the products sold on the market and has also published guidelines on the application of the CCD in relation to costs and the APR.

The main aim of the CCD is to offer a high degree of consumer protection and thus to boost consumer confidence, enable free movement of credit offers across borders and remedy distortions of competition arising from differences in national laws regarding consumer credit. At the same time it should be stressed that it is not the objective of the Directive to incite consumers to take more credit, but rather to provide them with all necessary information and rights to thoroughly reflect before taking credit.

However, it is important to remember that the following credit agreements are outside the scope of the directive:
All credit agreements which are secured either by a mortgage or by another comparable security commonly used in a Member State on immovable property or secured by a right related to immovable property (Article 2(2)(a)), and All credit agreements whose purpose is to acquire or retain property rights in land or in an existing or projected building (Article 2(2)(b)).

It should also be noted that any credit agreement involving a total amount of less than €200 or more than €75,000 is outside the scope of the CCD as well, although Member States may voluntarily extend the application of the CCD to credit agreements outside its scope.

Article 27(2) of the CCD requires the Commission to undertake, every five years, a review of the thresholds laid down in this Directive and the percentages used to calculate the compensation due in the event of early repayment, and also to monitor the way in which the regulatory choices of Member States affect the internal market and consumers. Additionally, the European Parliament, in its resolution of 20 November 2012, called on the Commission to present a report on the implementation of the Directive and to assess fully its impact in terms of consumer protection.

The Commission has accordingly adopted this report, based on the transposition check that is still on-going and on the evidence gathered by a consumer credit market study, as well as a study on regulatory choices of the Member States, the latter two having been carried out by external contractors.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)259: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:259:FIN

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