As we informed in june 2016, thounsands of Greece consumers were fighting against Eurobank in a collective litigation. The claim was heard before the First Instance court in November 2015. The first-instance ruling was handed down on 24/5/2016 (known as the “334/2016 decision”), which fully vindicates the borrowers. Nevertheless, Eurobank appealed the decision. The collective lawsuit was heard at the Appeals level on 28/9/2017 and included an increased number of claimants-participants. The ruling is expected to be published in the coming months.
In the meantime, we have been informed that the first-instance rulings for the collective lawsuits against National Bank of Greece and Alpha Bank vindicate the borrowers.
Both the decisions (799/2017 for National Bank of Greece and 800/2017 for Alpha Bank) order that:
- These are loans with a foreign currency value clause, and not loans of the same currency,
- CHF Loan Agreements are not simple loan contracts but complex financial products,
- The courts accept that these loans were swapped, since what the borrowers received was the product of “converting” the loan from CHF to EUR.
- consumers have no specialized knowledge of investment portfolio products,
- also the employees of the bank were not specifically certified according to article 4 of Law 2836/2000, as replaced by article 49 of Law 3371/2005 and article 16 of Law 3606/2007, in order to provide such products,
- finally, consumers have never been adequately, clearly and completely informed of the risks arising from this kind of loans.
The rulings have been published by the Daneia CHF Association, member of the European Group for Consumer Rights:
→ Ruling against National Bank of Greece: Download PDF
→ Ruling against Alpha Bank: Download PDF
