Bold judgement of the Court in a high profile case on a loan indexed to CHF!

There is no denying that for the so-called franc debtors, the New Year started with a bang. Following the previous jurisprudence of the Polish courts, one can observe that decisions on declaring a loan agreement in CHF completely invalid were, as a rule, made only in cases concerning the so-called denominated loans, i.e. those which loan amount in the agreement was expressed in CHF.

The judgement of the District Court in Warsaw, issued on 3 January 2020 in the case where exactly three months earlier the Court of Justice of the EU gave a preliminary ruling, can be considered as a precedent and certainly strengthening the rebuttable nature of defective loan agreements entered into with banks. And the fact that the Court found the possibility of declaring the entire loan agreement indexed to CHF (i.e. where the amount of the loan is expressed in PLN and only at the moment of its transfer is converted to CHF) null and void opens the way for franc debtors to fully implement the principle already decided by the CJEU that it is up to the borrowers (Consumers) to finally assess whether and to what extent the declaration of nullity of the agreement will be beneficial to them or not.

It is worth noting that it was after the mentioned CJEU judgement that franc debtors’ interest in eliminating defective credit agreements entered into with banks from the course of law increased massively. This interest is fully justified as Polish Courts finally seem to be taking a uniform jurisprudence line – a line that is fully beneficial to borrowers (Consumers).

Mariusz Maksis