Bulgarian citizens who have credits abroad, but for one reason or another have stopped paying them to their foreign bank will be searchable and retrievable by their last known domicile in Bulgaria or anywhere within the European Union. This follows from the decision of the European Court in Luxembourg, which directly affects the Bulgarian borrowers who have taken money from a bank abroad, but eventually stopped paying the loan. The document is published on the website of the European Court in Luxembourg. The case in which the court ruled in Luxembourg is the following:
Czech mortgage banks and German citizen Lindner have entered a contract for a mortgage to finance the purchase of real estate. At the conclusion of the loan agreement Lindner is domiciled in Marianske Lazne in the Czech Republic and in accordance with this contract was required to notify the bank of any change of residence. The contract has envisaged in case of disputes the parties to obey to the jurisdiction to the court in whose jurisdiction the bank is located. The loan agreement was worth about 4.5 million Czech crowns, or about 170 thousand euros. After Lindner stopped his instalments to repay the loan, the bank found that he no longer resided on the address specified in the contract and the bank failed to establish his residence in the Czech Republic.
Under these circumstances, the Czech court turned to the court in Luxembourg, asking for an interpretation of the jurisdiction regulation and in particular whether it allowed a provision of the internal law of a Member State that allows for the conduct of proceedings against a person whose residence is unknown.
The Court in Luxembourg ruled that if the national court fails to identify the consumer’s domicile within the national territory, it must check whether the consumer is domiciled in another EU Member State. If the national court, on the one hand, cannot identify the consumer’s domicile in the EU, on the other hand, and has no evidentiary facts permitting it to conclude that the user actually domiciles outside the EU, the rule according to which in case of dispute the relevant jurisdiction is that of the Member State of domicile of the consumer, must be understood as having in mind not only the present residence of the consumer, but his last known residence, the ruling of the court reads.
Therefore, the court in Luxembourg considers that the Czech courts have jurisdiction to consider the action brought by the bank against Lindner, insofar as they are unable to determine his current residence. The decision of the court in Luxembourg applies also for Bulgarian citizens caught up in a case similar to the one discussed above, since Bulgaria is a full member of the EU and will also affect foreign nationals from the EU, who have credits from banks in Bulgaria but have stopped repaying them.
The Commission on Consumer Protection commented that at this stage there are no such registered cases concerning Bulgaria and its citizens.
