STATEMENT: The Supreme Court Judgment on the floor clauses celebrates a decade: a milestone of Law in Spain

Madrid, May 8, 2023.

On May 9, 2013, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that set an important precedent in the protection of the rights of Spanish consumers and annulled all the floor clauses of various entities. More than a million people directly benefited from it, although according to those responsible, these effects have later reached almost ten million, being used as a reference in its field. Its manager is currently integrated into the Abafi Network of Lawyers and Economists

Ten years have passed since the historic judgment of the Supreme Court that was a precursor in the protection of the rights of Spanish consumers, the Judgment dated May 9, 2013, which declared the invalidity of the controversial floor clause as abusive and its legacy continues still relevant and has spread to other areas. The Judgment established that these clauses had not been included in a transparent and understandable manner for the clients, which prevented them from understanding the scope and implications thereof, and was ratified by the Supreme Court Judgment dated March 24, 2015, which directly affected 40,000 people, but above all, it consolidated the open path that served to claim other abusive clauses such as mortgage formalization expenses, the opening commission and other bank costs that were previously considered irremovable. Its impact was so important that, as a result of the increase in litigation, motivated, it must be said, in the refusal of the entities to meet the extrajudicial requirements of tens of thousands of users, specialized courts had to be created in the matter. The Judgment of May 9, 2013 indicated that this type of clauses could be subjected to double control: 1. Incorporation control: that is, they must be clear, specific and simple.2. Transparency control: It supposes that the consumer must be able to understand the true legal and economic scope of signing or not signing said clause. The resolution meant the automatic lowering of the mortgage payment of almost a million people, and the possibility of several million more could claim the same effect, and although at first, and in an incomprehensible way, the Supreme Court limited the scope of the retroactivity of said annulment, that is, the amount of money to be returned by the entities, it did not It is less true that in December 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that if the nullity of a floor clause was declared, the return due to its application must be complete and total, that is, the bank must return everything unduly collected. To this day, and during this decade in which the Euribor has been at a minimum, the consequences of said sentence have meant a cost for the Bank of approximately 3,000 million euros, money that "has gone directly into the pocket of consumers Spanish". Today, the lawyer who obtained that historic ruling, Rafael Carrellán García, is part of the ABAFI NETWORK OF LAWYERS AND ECONOMISTS, a network of independent law firms founded in 2016 by the best experts in banking, contractual and consumer law and which has achieved important victories in the defense of the rights of users, consumers and companies, in recent years. Among his achievements, in addition to the aforementioned and pioneering Judgments of May 9, 2013 and March 24, 2015, the Judgment of November 18, 2021 of the Court of First Instance No. loan of three million euros signed by the Córdoba City Council, and for which more than ten million had already been paid as it contained an implicit swap, the Judgment of the Provincial Court of Malaga that declared the nullity of the opening commission in a mortgage loan (Judgment 426/2020), the Judgment of the Provincial Court of Seville that ruled that the members of a cooperative society constituted for the promotion of a group of houses have the status of consumers, among many other resolutions on foreclosures, preferred shares , swaps, insurance, multi-currency, or complex financial products, some of its members even intervening before the Court of Justice of the European Union. But although they express their pride in the pioneering Judgments achieved, and in particular for the one that is now ten years old, The members of the ABAFI NETWORK always look to the future in order to adapt to the incessant legal or jurisprudential changes, as well as to anticipate the needs that their clients may have, participating in training events, to which they are frequently called. as speakers, intervening in the media on a recurring basis to reflect on legal news, or periodically updating their website with technical and effective articles, aware that their commitment to the rights of users requires constant updating.

Contact Contact name: Rafael López Contact description: Rafael López Contact telephone number: 957612062