Debt Collection must be reasonable - No Foreclosure on Homes for a Debt below 10.000 € in Greece. Some effects ECRC member EKZPIZO attributes to our Coalition. P4: ADAPTATION SHOULD BE PREFERRED TO CREDIT CANCELLATION AND DESTRUCTION. The fourth principle of responsible credit has got an interesting implementation in Greece where foreclosures on real estate have been restricted in case the claim is less than 10.000 €. From this a general subprinciple to our principle P4 can be derived: A CERTAIN DEBT COLLECTION PRACTICE MAY BE IRRESPONSIBLE IF THE SUM DUE IS UNPROPORTIONAL IN RESPECT TO THE HARM THIS COLLECTION WOULD INFLICT ONTO THE DEBTOR. Melina Mouzouraki from EKPIZO in Greece who organised the Greek national conference on responsible credit (see report 2006) reports on some results our common efforts to make credit more adapted to the needs of the people and less dangerous for their lives. While the Greek opposition party already introduced a motion based on the 'ECRC principles into the Greek parliament some time ago the parliament has now passed a law limiting the misuse of formal rights which do extorionate harm to the consumer. Melina Mouzouraki writes: "In Greece we have a brand new modification of the Law on Consumer Protection. This modification falls short of our expecations, but has two very interesting provisions, one with regard to collective redress of consumers and the second one providing that real estate cannot be seized by a bank for a debt below 10.000 euros. The idea of this provision comes from Dimitris Spirakos, who came to it during the Greek Responsible Credit Conference last year in Athens." ID: 39917 Author(s): UR Publication date: 12/07/07

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Created: 12/07/07. Last changed: 12/07/07.
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