The Attorney General has already brought 46 extraordinary complaints before the Supreme Court in the francowicze cases. In eight of the nine rulings reviewed so far, the court ultimately dismissed the payment orders.
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In the withdrawn payment orders, the Supreme Court aligned with the Attorney General by recognizing violations of both constitutional rights and European Union law, ruling in favor of the consumers. In the ongoing cases, the prosecutor argues that courts issued payment orders without properly examining the underlying loan agreements, and in many instances did not even have the agreements in their possession, thereby enforcing disputed terms contained in those contracts.
Among these cases, three recent complaints have been submitted to the Supreme Court. The first concerns a 2017 order from the court in Kalisz for the payment of nearly PLN 6.9 thousand tied to Swiss franc indexed home loans. The prosecutor notes that the court accepted the claim in full, relying only on an extract from the bank’s ledgers, which showed the debt was due on the filing date, along with a properly filed payment request.
Before the judgment was issued, the court did not require the plaintiff to present the credit agreement that would establish the payment obligation. Because there were no objections, the payment order became final and enforceable in the ongoing collection procedure. It is undisputed that, due to the death of the husband with whom the loan was jointly taken, the defendant could not repay the debt.
The prosecutor adds that this sequence raises concerns about due process.
Disputed payment order
In another case, the Prosecutor General challenged the June 2020 payment order issued by the Gdańsk District Court in a payment procedure. The matter concerns a 2006 loan of over PLN 30,000 aimed at purchasing a building plot. Through subsequent settlements, the parties adjusted installments and payment dates, and the contract was eventually terminated due to nonpayment. The bank then filed a lawsuit, and the Gdańsk court fully recognized the debt, ordering payment of PLN 30,500 plus contractual interest within two weeks.
One defendant had died after the lawsuit was filed but before the warrant was issued. The court proceeded with the case, ultimately ruling against a defendant who no longer had legal capacity. The legal proceedings surrounding this case and the resulting payment order call into question the validity of the judgment as a whole, according to the prosecutor.
Great interest
The third complaint recently submitted by the public prosecutor concerns a 2008 franc loan taken by a married couple. In March 2019, the court in Bielsko-Biała upheld the bank’s claim and ordered the defendants to pay more than PLN 269,000 francs with interest calculated at four times the National Bank of Poland Lombard Rate. A payment order was issued, and enforcement is ongoing, with defendants facing a liability of almost PLN 1.5 million. To date, more than PLN 156,000 has already been repaid.
In the extraordinary complaints filed with the Supreme Court, the Attorney General requested the withdrawal of the three payment orders and a reconsideration of the cases. The prosecutor also asked that execution of the contested judgments be suspended during review.
Consumer Protection
The complaints emphasize that, even when loan agreements existed, courts did not scrutinize their terms for prohibited clauses or assess their validity and effectiveness. The absence of such review is presented as a violation of the constitutional principle of consumer protection against unfair market practices. In each case, the defendant is a consumer in a weaker position as a party to a dispute with a professional lender, and the courts were expected to evaluate not only the existence and amount of the claim, but also whether the lending institution abused its position against a non-professional borrower.
The Attorney General also argued that the loan agreements were drafted from a bank-developed model that allowed unilateral shaping of the borrower’s legal position. As a result, the contracts allegedly enabled banks to set arbitrary terms affecting the debt amount, undermining the borrower’s interests and breaching principles of good practice and contractual balance.
DAD
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