Important new European judgement

BigBudgie

Just found this important judgement from the European Court. It's from 3rd June 2010 !!!

Unless I am reading this wrongly it basically seems to make the Supreme Court Judgement and the whole of the test case irrelevant.

It would appear to allow the UK Government to use existing or adopt new national legislation which authorises a judicial review as to the unfairness of contractual terms including those which relate to the definition of the main subject matter of the contract or to the adequacy of the price and remuneration against the services or goods supplied in exchange even if those terms are written in PIL.

The objective part of the judgement is as follows :-

1. Articles 4(2) and 8 of Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which authorises a judicial review as to the unfairness of contractual terms which relate to the definition of the main subject-matter of the contract or to the adequacy of the price and remuneration, on the one hand, as against the services or goods to be supplied in exchange, on the other hand, even in the case where those terms are drafted in plain, intelligible language;

2. Articles 2 EC, 3(1)(g) EC and 4(1) EC do not preclude an interpretation of Articles 4(2) and 8 of Directive 93/13 according to which Member States may adopt national legislation which authorises a judicial review as to the unfairness of contractual terms which relate to the definition of the main subject-matter of the contract or to the adequacy of the price and remuneration, on the one hand, as against the services or goods to be supplied in exchange, on the other hand, even in the case where those terms are drafted in plain, intelligible language.

and the full judgement may be read here :-

http://curia.europa.eu/jurisp/cgi-bin/form.pl?lang=en&newform=newform&alljur=alljur&jurcdj=jurcdj&jurtpi=jurtpi&jurtfp=jurtfp&alldocrec=alldocrec&docj=docj&docor=docor&docop=docop&docav=docav&docsom=docsom&docinf=docinf&alldocnorec=alldocnorec&docnoj=docnoj&docnoor=docnoor&radtypeord=on&typeord=ALL&docnodecision=docnodecision&allcommjo=allcommjo&affint=affint&affclose=affclose&numaff=&ddatefs=&mdatefs=&ydatefs=&ddatefe=&mdatefe=&ydatefe=&nomusuel=&domaine=&mots=unfair+terms&resmax=100&Submit=Submit

Case : C-484/08
Date : 2010-06-03
Parties : Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid

BigBudgie

This new European judgement is also being discussed on Legal Beagles

http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/showthread.php?p=165657#post165657

A reciprocal link to this thread has also been added to the thread on Legal Beagles

showergirl

Does this mean that the government can step in to get our charges back

BigBudgie

This European judgement means that the UK Coalition Government can legislate for a judicial review of all terms and conditions contained within a personal current account contract including those terms which are the main subject matter of the contract.
This effectively means that the charging terms ( which the banks and the Supreme Court consider to be part of the 'package of services' and therefore part of the main subject matter of the contract ) can be assessed for fairness and that it can be a full assessment including the price level of the charges themselves.

However, only a Court can decide whether the charges are actually fair or not, the UK Government cannot simply declare that the charges are unfair, even though the Office of Fair Trading and certain past and present Government officials have already indicated that they believe this to be the case.

Neil1690

Am very suprised dome of the resident 'experts' here, have not been on to shoot down this thread in flames like they normally do...

Perhaps there is some actual merit to it and they have scurried off to speak to their associates, who may or may not know people in the banking world....

dunstonh

Or maybe its the weekend and its during the school holidays. Or maybe its the same as every other false hope that has been posted before. i.e. a little bit of potential but impossible to say unless someone puts it to the test.