Cross-border Debt Recovery Blog
by Marco Sposini
Laywer, Milan Bar Association
Worldwide debt recovery news
The Court of Justice on Articles 6(1) and 7(1) of Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts
19 December 2025
The Court of Justice of the European Union, by judgment ECLI:EU:C:2025:993, dated 18 December 2025, in Case C‑320/24 – in proceedings between, on the one hand, CR and TP, two consumers who are the promisee purchasers of a property, and, on the other, Soledil Srl, admitted to a collective insolvency procedure known as ‘concordato preventivo’, the promissor vendor, concerning a request for termination of the reciprocal promise to sell (‘preliminary contract for sale’) concerning that property and the validity of the penalty clause included in that preliminary contract for sale – ruled that Article 6(1) and Article 7(1) of Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts, read in the light of the principle of effectiveness and Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, must be interpreted as precluding national legislation under which the application of the principle of res judicata does not allow a national court, to which a case has been remitted following cassation, to examine of its own motion the nullity of an allegedly unfair contractual term where (i) the plea of the unfairness of that term was not relied on by the consumer at earlier stages of the judicial proceedings and (ii) the nullity of such a term was not raised by the national courts of their own motion in the proceedings which gave rise to the judgment of the court of last instance.
The text is available here