10 years have passed since Black Thursday. It was a shock for hundreds of thousands of Polish families
On January 15, 2015, he will forever sign up in the history of consumer protection in Poland. The drastic increase in CHF courses in relation to the zloty became an impulse to a grassroots initiative of consumers who went out into the street to defend their rights and took the fight of David with Goliath.
The borrowers felt cheated because they did not realize that the conclusion of a loan agreement related to a foreign currency (here: CHF) exposes them to unlimited currency risk, which on January 15 took on monstrous sizes. The thing is that the CHF rate struck over PLN 5.12 for 1 CHF on that day.
For hundreds of thousands of Polish families, this meant that their debt was higher, despite the years of repayment of the loan, from the amount they received at the time of concluding the contract in 2004-2011.
Collective despair and anxiety forced them to take actions aimed at protecting their rights against the court and to take advantage of the regulation of Directive 93, in relation to which the first steps taken in 2012-2013. But these were individual matters.
The consumer protection initially encountered a number of restrictions and the lack of experience of Polish courts in the application of Directive 93. The exercise of rights to consumers required a different approach than previously in force in Poland. The consumer protection implemented in 1993 on the EU market required the entrepreneur to meet additional, not only standard, information obligations in relation to a natural person who concluded a contract for the purpose not directly related to her business activity. These duties were two.
