ABSTRACT
Cătălin-Gabriel Stănescu and Albert Albanezi
Non-judicial debt recovery is a growing and very lucrative business in Romania. After years of struggle, Government Emergency Ordinance (GEO) No. 50/2010 on consumer credit and GEO No. 52/2016 on consumer credit relating to residential immovable property represent the core legislation for informal debt collection. Nevertheless, the shortcomings of these legislative acts reaffirm that the journey ahead is long and treacherous.
The focus of this chapter is twofold. First, it offers an overview of the failed legislative projects intended to implement or amend the legal provisions addressing abusive informal debt-collection practices. Although these projects tackled different issues of informal debt collection, most shared a common fate: they were all deemed unconstitutional by the Romanian Constitutional Court, mainly due to provisional inconsistencies and procedural breaches. Second, the chapter analyzes the provisions of GEO No. 52/2016 on consumer credit relating to residential immovable property, focusing on the definition of debt collectors, licensing, communications, harassment and misleading practices, the validation of debt, additional charges, and enforcement via state action, as well as highlighting the ordinance’s deficiencies and areas of improvement.
