Greek Swiss Franc Borrowers Challenge Three Big Banks
Source: Balkan Insight
A courtroom in Athens, September 2012. Photo: EPA/ALEXANDROS BELTES.
The Swiss Franc Borrowers Association in Greece filed a lawsuit at the Supreme Court on Friday against three unnamed major banks, claiming loans made in Swiss francs had unfair exchange-rate terms and that borrowers were not clearly informed or properly warned before signing.
In the lawsuit, around 3,700 members of the Swiss Franc Borrowers Association are asking the court to declare the exchange rate clause in the loans invalid and to recalculate the loans using the original exchange rate from when the money was first lent.
They also want the Supreme Court to send a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for an official interpretation of EU law before continuing with the case.
“We request that a preliminary question be raised, so that, in cooperation with the CJEU, the issue can be resolved and EU law incorporated into national law,” Despoina Soniadou, president of the Swiss Franc Borrowers Association, told BIRN.
The CJEU has ruled in several cases that the clause in a Swiss-franc loan contract that puts all the exchange-rate risk on the borrower can be judged as abusive if it was not drafted in a clear and understandable way, and therefore can be struck down under EU consumer-protection law.
According to the lawsuit in Greece, Soniadou said that the borrowing concerns between 65,000 and 70,000 separate loan contracts. These are mainly housing loans that were signed between 2003 and 2009.
In 2007, Soniadou, like other borrowers, took out a housing loan worth 200,000 euros because the banks advertised these loans as “a banking product that has a low interest rate compared to euro loans”, which had higher rates at the time.
The Greek government has promised action to help borrowers, with the then Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis stating in February 2025 that in the first half of this year, a discussion would take place for the “first time” about intervention. However, there have been no developments since then.
At the European Parliament last month, Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) MEP Yannis Maniatis called for a “unified solution” for borrowers in Greece “on the model of the rest of the EU countries”, citing PASOK’s proposal for “sharing responsibility between consumers and banks, based on the actual amount received by citizens and not on abusive decisions.”
The court’s decision is expected in the coming months.
The original article: belongs to Balkan Insight .
