The regulatory framework of consumer over-indebtedness in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Greece: Comparative profiles of responsible credit and personal insolvency law

Abstract

This article compares and analyses the regulatory framework addressing consumer over-indebtedness in the UK, Germany, Greece and Italy against the policy and law of the European Union. It aims to capture the preventive and the curative measures against over-indebtedness in the selected Member States to assess the impact that EU policy and law is having on the internal market and effectively tackle a problem that affects millions of European consumers. The ultimate goal is to identify good practices and major shortcomings that the EU should attend to repair failures that an uncoordinated nature of national regimes could generate in a common market and its side-effects, as well as the economic and social cohesion of its citizens. The paper concludes that if Member States to some extent have harmonised their preventive measures – yet with differences that need attention – the cure of over-indebtedness remains to individual but uncoordinated national initiatives that expose an under resourced strategy at EU level.