Evictions: European Court of Justice enters fray

“Europe supports Spanish judges in their move to halt evictions,” leads El Economista following the publication by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of the findings of one of its Advocates General on a case brought by a court in Barcelona.

The case concerns a client of the Spanish bank Caixa Catalunya who saw his housing repossessed by the latter because he could no longer pay his mortgage, the newspaper writes. According to the newspaper, the Advocate General, Juliane Kokott, believes that the Spanish law on mortgages – which dates back to 1909 – is “incompatible” with EU law because it does not sufficiently protect consumers from banks.

In particular, it is almost impossible for those consumers to ask the EU judge examining the foreclosures to rule on the “abusive character” of the national clauses that provide for the foreclosures. Since 2007, nearly 400,000 such evictions have taken place in Spain.

The ECJ's is expected to hand down its verdict early next year. In the meantime, the findings of Kokott furnish a weighty argument for those proposing that the law be reformed, starting with the group of Spanish judges that have become highly mobilised around the issue, writes El Economista —

Normally the Court follows the criteria of the Advocate General in almost all cases, and so the final decision could give the Spanish judges another tool to stop the evictions.