Today, the CJEU published its decision in a case we had reported on a few months ago, Romano v DSL. In this case, two consumers had taken out a loan - renouncing their right of withdrawal (RoW) in order to obtain immediate performance. In such cases, the 2002 Directive on distance marketing of consumer financial services prescribes the extinction of the RoW when the creditor's performance has been entirely delivered, ie once the consumers have actually received the money.
The Romanos claimed that, ten years after entering the contract, they should still be entitled to withdraw because they had not been given correct information. Given that German courts did not recognise withdrawal in distance financial services to deserve different treatment than other transactions and hence ignored the restriction, they should have been told that they were actually entitled to withdrawal even after having nominally renounced the possibility.
According to the AG, the position maintained by German courts was untenable under the Directive. As a consequence, there was also no misinformation on the side of the lender, who had correctly notified the consumers that they were giving up their RoW. The Court follows this reasoning, which seems to trump the German courts' quest for systematic consistence in view of the integral application of the concerned EU directive. Nice try for the claimants, but no belated Easter egg in this case.
