April 11 (SeeNews) - Slovenia's Higher Court in Ljubljana upheld a lower court ruling ordering Sparkasse Bank to stop charging a zero supplement instead of a negative Euribor supplement on consumer loan interest rates, the Slovenian Consumers' Association said.
The bank is obliged to enforce the judgment, and the association called on the bank to correctly calculate the contractual interest rate retrospectively, the Slovenian Consumers' Association said in a statement last week.
"We expect Sparkasse to comply with the judgment and immediately end the practice. At the same time, we expect them to respect the court's ruling that such billing of Euribor was illegal and that all their borrowers would be charged the contractual interest rate for the entire period, thus taking into account the actual negative values of Euribor for the period before the judgment became final," the president of the association, Breda Kutin, said.
In 2017, the Slovenian Consumers' Association filed a lawsuit against Sparkasse Bank for non-compliance with the negative Euribor in consumer credit contracts, a practice that had been pursued by the lender since 2015, when the value of Euribor became negative.
The three-month Euribor benchmark rate turned negative in April 2015 and has been moving in negative territory since then. Currently, the value of the three-month Euribor is -0.449%.
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