MADRID, 26 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Adicae calculates that the bank could return around 170 or 190 million euros for the ‘macro-demand’ against the floor clauses whose ruling is pending resolution in the Supreme Court.
This has been stated by the association in a press conference to assess the announcement made today by the High Court in which it has reported that it is raising the debate and deliberation on this ‘macro-demand’, filed by Adicae herself. The debate will begin next Wednesday, June 1, and the ruling could be known that same day.
The member of the national board of directors of Adicae, Fernando Herrero, has indicated that the amount that the banks could return would be around 170 or 190 million euros, although the figure depends on the characteristics of each mortgage, including the term , interest rate, differential, type of clause, etc, as well as the people who finally claim for these clauses. In fact, Adicae estimates around three million affected users.
Likewise, Herrero has recalled that the bank has around 1,000 million euros in provisions for floor clause issues, counting the effects of the return only since 2013.
On the other hand, Adicae has highlighted the importance that the deliberation on the ‘macro-demand’ filed by the association has been raised to the Plenary of the Supreme Court. The association’s legal services coordinator, Víctor Cremades, stated that it is a “logical” decision because of the “great importance” of a resolution of this type and because of the “high-profile” legal issues.
Cremades has also highlighted the importance of the “tool” of the ‘macrodemand’ or collective action, describing it as “effective” to “get the compensation of consumers and their defense”.
For his part, the president of Adicae, Manuel Pardos, has criticized the slowness of the Justice to resolve this issue, although he has defended that the position of the association is that “it is never too late if happiness is good”. And he has trusted that the Supreme Court’s ruling supposes “the liquidation of this case.”
He has also criticized the banking sector, which would have nearly 220,000 individual cases of floor clauses in the courts, “jamming and hindering Justice.”
Likewise, he has affirmed that the bank would have resolved “one on one” about 400,000 cases “as it has pleased, paying customers what it has pleased.” However, Pardos has defended that the intention of Adicae “is not to fight with the bank”, but rather “to protect consumers”.
It should be noted that Adicae is pending the resolution of the Supreme Court on a class action lawsuit against 101 Spanish banks and savings banks for abusive floor clauses in mortgage loans. The Supreme Court ruling will come after the first victory that the association and the consumers obtained in the first instance in the commercial court 11 of Madrid, which was later ratified in the Provincial Court of Madrid in 2018.
In said ruling, the Court clarified, as requested by Adicae, that all the amounts collected in application of these “abusive” mortgage land must be returned, and not only those applied since 2013, and that said refund should be made to all consumers who in Spain had suffered the application of that abusive clause.
“Despite the fact that the Justice has reiterated in hundreds of thousands of resolutions the abusiveness of the floor clauses, and that the Real Estate Credit Law itself prohibited them in 2019, the condemned entities have presented appeals to each of the sentences obtained by Adicae in this collective legal action with the aim of delaying the essential global solution that requires an abuse of this scope and characteristics, while some entities have even continued to apply the floors to consumers”, the association has denounced.