Thursday 27 January 2011

Second chance for UK

While Sweden has been referred to the ECJ, the UK has received a second chance as far as the proper implementation of the Consumer Credit Directive 2008/48/EC is concerned.

The purpose of this Directive was to ensure that consumers can easily compare various credit offers available in all Member States, e.g. by setting out requirements on standard information to be provided when advertising unsecured lending services (Chapter II of the Diretive) or by harmonizing calculation of the Annual Percentage Rate of Change (APR - no idea what it means? check here) (Chapter V of the Directive).

The deadline for implementation of the Directive was set on 11 June 2010. The infringement procedure had been initiated last year already since UK has not communicated to the European Commission all measures implementing the Directive. Today UK has received two more months to comply with the European requirements. In two months European Commission may refer UK to the European Court of Justice.