Neither the indifference that distances ministers even further from Congress during the summer period nor the staunch refusal of the Popular Party to accept the requests for appearances from the rest of the parliamentary groups have been enough to prevent the presence of the Minister of Economy, Luis de Guindos, in the Commission that will meet next Tuesday in the Lower House, where he must explain the measures that his department will have to promote in the face of the new ruling by the Luxembourg Court, which requires the Spanish Government to strengthen the protection of mortgage debtors.
The ruling is issued as a result of a preliminary question raised by the president of the third section of the Provincial Court of Castellón, in relation to the possibilities that a person affected by a mortgage foreclosure process has to appeal rulings. The resolution of the European Court concludes that debtors have fewer possibilities than the bank to oppose unfavorable decisions. And it understands that article 695 of the Civil Procedure Law does not comply with the European directive on consumer protection regarding abusive clauses in consumer contracts, nor does it comply with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The Government will not be able to continue dodging with new patches a responsibility that it should have exercised since judicial rulings began to rain down, urging it to correct the shameful abusive practices against debtors and in favor of financial institutions. This second conviction by the Court of Justice of the European Union is a slap on the wrist in which, once again, they reproach that its reforms have been insufficient and that it is not admissible in a democratic society that there is such a deep imbalance between debtors and financial institutions. It is not tolerable that the law in our country protects the fact that those affected cannot appeal certain unfavorable resolutions, but that banks can.
Luis de Guindos will have the opportunity next Tuesday to announce in the Economic Commission that he will not repeat the same clumsiness as in his first reform and that he will amend a law that, in the opinion of the Courts, is a real mess. And he will also have the opportunity to accept that the Government will be, from now on, as expeditious in the protection of citizens as it has been in the rescue of banking entities. And we, the entire opposition, will have an almost unprecedented opportunity in times of opacity and little political dialogue: to exercise the role that corresponds to us and that, on many occasions, we cannot play due to the Government's resistance to appear before the Chambers.
The imbalance that exists between the number of meetings that the Government has held with banking entities and with platforms that defend the rights of mortgage holders is the most graphic example of the close proximity that exists with some and the governmental allergy towards those social movements that, armed with reasons, have put the Executive in check,
The Government does not listen to social groups, nor to opposition groups, but it will not be able to avoid complying with a ruling that, far from embarrassing it, has responded with silence.
Regardless of the path that the Government chooses, judges already have one more instrument at their disposal to paralyze many of the evictions underway. They have been much more sensitive than the Government and there have been many times those who have raised their voices to demand that the Executive banish from our legislation all those articles that deepen the defenselessness of debtors and protect those who have been convicted on repeated occasions for their abusive practices, for their lack of social responsibility and for the absence of transparency in the contracts signed during the real estate bubble.
The only path that exists and that the Government will have to articulate, surely without much emphasis and reluctantly, is the modification of the Civil Procedure Law so that in our country we have, at least, a financial standard comparable to European legislation. This and other observations should be channeled through the instruments that the Government has at its disposal so that we do not continue to witness, day after day, the drama that throws into the void the only victims who are condemned to pay for the excesses of a stage in which banking entities hatched, with the connivance of the Executive, a bubble for which they have not had to face the consequences.
Consumers have been the only ones harmed by unbalanced practices and contracts that always favored banks. After six years of crisis, in which many families have had their homes taken away, so many dreams have been buried and so many people have been punished to live in conditions of extreme poverty, the time has come to articulate balanced legislation in which the other party, the one represented by the banks, today healthy thanks to the injection of public funds, are forced to assume a social commitment that, until now, they have vilely evaded thanks to the complicit silence of those who govern. A silence that the Luxembourg Court is trying to put an end to. Guindos will have the next word next Tuesday.
Ana Oramas, deputy of the Canarian Coalition
