Authors: Chrysanthi Balomenou, Eleftheria Panteli

Title: Dealing with household’s over- indebtedness in Greece during the current financial crisis: Law 3869/2010. An evaluation of its effectiveness.

Abstract

Household over-indebtedness, i.e. the weakness of individuals to meet their obligations towards credit institutions, a phenomenon closely associated with contemporary consumer lifestyles and prevalent throughout the developed world, has a negative impact on borrowers themselves, the credit system and the economy. The current economic crisis has contributed decisively to the exacerbation of this phenomenon in Greece, establishing an urgent need for a legislative framework to deal with it. Consequently, the State has attempted to fill the existing gap in Greek law regarding dealing with over-indebtedness of individuals by adopting Law 3869/2010, mainly influenced by German law.

Certainly, this law does not provide for a temporary regulation to deal with the consequences of the crisis, but is permanent and irreversible.

All of this are analyzed in the theoretical part of this paper, while the empirical part examines the law’s post-implementation effectiveness to date. It is evident from studying 50 judgements that, despite its weaknesses, the law largely achieves its primary purpose, i.e. favourable debt regulation of highly-indebted households, so as to enable them to reintegrate into economic life. As the study was conducted at an early stage of the law’s implementation, definitive conclusions may only be drawn in due course.