For some it is a cold shower, according to others an additional difficulty, however not insurmountable: the Court of Cassation has issued a ruling that the panorama of the Euribor case changes negatively. The many lawsuits with which savers are trying to get thousands of euros of interest not due for mortgages and loans taken out between 29 September 2005 and 30 May 2008 could pay the price.
The background
In 2013 the European Antitrust sanctioned four large European banks – Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and the Royal Bank of Scotland group – for having set up a cartel aimed at manipulating the Euribor rate, thus illicitly altering the interest rate loan market variable. By virtue of this decision, last December the Court of Cassation established that reimbursement of interest unjustly applied could be requested from all banks, not just the four that had organized the cartel. According to some calculations, based on previous sentences and official technical advice, consumers could obtain the repayment of 7,000 euros for every 100,000 loans.
What does today’s sentence say?
Ruling 12007/2024 published on May 3 is of a very different tone. In which the Court of Cassation, while theoretically confirming the right to partial reimbursement of interest, requires bank customers to demonstrate various facts. For example, if the bank was not part of the cartel, it will be necessary to demonstrate that the institution was aware of those illegitimate agreements. Yes, but how? The road, according to the lawyer Smeralda Capettione of Aduc’s lawyers, is to “assume that the bank could not have been unaware: by reconstructing the contracts downstream, in fact, it is possible to show that the banks, despite not having taken part in the agreement, reproduced the same scheme, effectively participating in the manipulation of the rate, because they continued to do so even after the Antitrust ruling”.
According to Cappetti, the sentence “was in the air, because in recent months, when we asked the banks to repay the sums, they denied it, claiming that they had never taken part in the Euribor cartel” however “it does not close to compensation, it asks for requirements more stringent, burdening the customer with a burden that wasn’t there before.”
He is also optimistic about the successful outcome of the cases Monica Mandico, lawyer and banking law expert: “There is no conflict with the previous ruling. Of course, the consumer is burdened with a burden that wasn’t there before, however those who have been following the story for years already have the necessary documentation to prove the manipulation of Euribor”, concludes the lawyer, preferring however not to specify in detail how .
He doesn’t think so Antonio Pinto, lawyer of Confconsumatori, according to whom “in light of this sentence, unfortunately it is not even worth starting a lawsuit, the outcome of which thus becomes a real lottery”. The judges of Rome have “emptied the previous sentence of all effectiveness”, he continues, and the reference is to the fourth to last page of the sentence, where it is established that, to obtain reimbursement, three things must be proven:
- that the manipulation of the banks sanctioned by the European Antitrust has effectively altered the Euribor;
- Whether, for what time and to what extent that alteration significantly affected the interest rate applied by the contract in question;
- What are the consequences of a possible nullity of the clauses of the contract on the “overall negotiation structure” and on the possibility that the minimum legal rate is applied.
“The three checks that are asked of the consumer are impossible to do. Above all, the second point, then, suggests that even if we were able to demonstrate the impact of the rate manipulation on the contract, if this were not considered “significant” by the judge, it would still be lost”. The new sentence, adds Pinto, also impacts the cases already started in recent months.
