ABSTRACT
Private debt collection has become a thriving business in all corners of Europe. The Old Continent has produced two rivaling pan-European private corporations specialized in collection and related activities (i.e., Intrum Justitia and EOS) many other smaller local ones. Despite this, efforts to subject collection practices to regulation have failed, not only in Brussels but within about a half of European Union Member States and countries aspiring to acquire E.U. membership. Paradoxically, sector-specific regulations are primarily in place in north-western high rule of law countries of Europe but are lacking in the post-socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe and some other older Member States. This inevitably results in geographically-unequal protections for European consumer-debtors.
A linked concern is that although empirical evidence concerning the problematic practices of private debt collectors is increasingly available in Europe, these have not been scrutinized through the prism of the rule of law, notwithstanding the increased prestige this concept has attained as of late.
Considering these realities, the paper expounds two related propositions. On the one hand, as the experiences, policies, and sectoral regulations of Scandinavian and other high rule of law countries prove, being a top rule of law country does not make regulation of debt collection practices unnecessary. On the other hand, rule of law-based scrutiny ought not be limited only to constitutional issues in strict sense, but should touch upon down-to-earth concerns such as problematic debt collection practices, because as this chapter will illustrate and explain, generic consumer protection law is ill-suited to ensuring the adequate protection of consumer-debtors against legally-questionable debt collection practices.
