Clausula suelo: Spanish banks advised to calculate total refund

For those who don’t know, the clausula suelo is a minimum interest rate included in some Spanish Mortgages, which impedes the client to benefit from the Euribor fall under this minimum rate.

In May 2013, the Spanish Supreme Court decided that this clause had to be canceled if the client was not properly informed about the consequences of having a “clausula suelo”. Therefore, the amounts paid due to this clause had to be refunded to the client since the Judgment of 9^th May 2013. This Judgment was not totally fair because it only ordered the bank to refund the client since May 2013 and not since the client started to pay this “clausula suelo”.

As we already posted, we are now waiting for a Judgment of the European Court regarding the retroactive effect of the refund. The Judgment is expected by mid-July 2016.

Nevertheless, the European Institutions, European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) have advised recently to the Spanish banks to calculate and be ready to refund all the amounts paid due to the “clausula suelo”. The reason why Spanish banks have been advised to calculate the total amount is the Judgment from the European court, which might decide that the order to return the amounts improperly paid due to the “clausula suelo” has retroactive effect. This means that the return will be calculated since the client signed the client started paying for this “clausula suelo” instead of since the Judgment from the Spanish Supreme Court of 9^th May 2013.

If this European Court Judgment orders the retroactive effect, the refund has been calculated to be around 7.6 billion Euros. The Spanish Courts thinks that the retroactive effect will have a bad impact to the Spanish Economy and don’t agree with the European Institutions. We will have to wait and find out very soon.