Six investors, including American funds Apollo Global Management and KKR, are interested in the platform that will manage non-performing loans of approximately 9 billion Euros of the portfolio of "Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena" SpA, sources quoted by Reuters claim. They also state that "Monte dei Paschi" has informed the potential bidders that the deal concerning the platform will go ahead, even though with slightly different terms than initially. The oldest bank in Italy is selling its 27.7 billion Euros non-performing loan portfolio as part of a complex scheme for the securitization of loan, as part of its complex rescue plan. "Monte dei Paschi" is working together with Italian investment bank "Mediobanca" on creating a platform that would manage the NPL portfolio and to bring in a partner that would improve the debt collection activity. "Monte dei Paschi" has announced on Friday that the platform would manage 9 billion Euros in NPLs, meaning one third of the loans sold as part of the aforementioned scheme.  According to sources, the bidders for the "Monte dei Paschi" platform are Cerved Credit Management, KKR in tandem with Varde Partners, Apollo Global Management, Cerberus, Prelios - together with Christofferson Robb & Company - and Lone Star. The "Monte dei Paschi" officials and those of the other parties mentioned made no statements about the report by Reuters.

 Ever since the announcement of the new stress test, in February 2016, the EBA has stated that "passing requirements are not included, because the objective of the test is to use it as a supervision instrument, and the results will be discussed individually with the participating banks, where actions for improving the situation will also be proposed".  The methodology for assessing the solvency as part of the stress test is found on the official website of the EBA, www.eba.europa.eu and should at least engender a minimum of faith among investors when it comes to the banks' abilities to deal with non-performing loans and capitalization deficit. Unfortunately, a general state of "fatigue" seems to have taken place in the Eurozone, amid the waiting in vain for the results promised by the central banks and governments. According to Reuters, amid the disputes between the European and Italian authorities, concerning the initiation of a new bail-out program for Italian banks, but without the prior application of the bail-in procedure, Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, has expressed his support for the governmental aid offered to Italian banks, because "such a program will allow them to sell some of their non-performing loans, which reduce their lending ability". But is such a "release" of Italian banks' lending capability rational and prudent, when the current volume of non-performing loans shows that they are incapable of correctly evaluating risks?  In the recent meeting of finance ministers of the G20 countries, Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy's finance minister said that "we are going in the right direction and there are no risks when it comes to systemic stability", according to an article in Financial Times. Padoan also rejected the possibility of a bail-in, as he said that such a measure would not be necessary.

When oil analysts look at the markets to try to get a sense of where oil prices are heading, one of the great unknowns, at least in the U.S. shale industry, is the large volume of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs). As oil prices began collapsing two years ago, shale drillers increasingly decided to defer the completion of their drilled wells, hoping to wait out the downturn and bring production online at a later point when prices rebounded.  But with oil prices suffering from a prolonged downturn, the DUCS began to mount, leaving a huge backlog of potential production that was yet to come online. From the point of view of the nascent and fragile oil price recovery (or more accurately, several cycles of recovery in the past year or so), the DUCs threatened to kill off the price rally, as they would bring a flood of new production online right when prices rose high enough.  However, it appears that the “fracklog” is already getting worked through. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the number of DUCs stopped rising in the first quarter of this year.

EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker appointed former French commissioner for financial services as chief negotiator in charge of negotiations with the UK. Michel Barnier, a 65-year old former French minister and vice-president in the previous Commission between 2010-14, was in charge of the internal market and services.  He sought the job of EU Commission president in 2014, but the task was later given to Juncker, his rival in the conservative European People's Party.   Barnier said in a tweet that he was “honoured to be entrusted” with the post.  He added: "Rendez-vous for beginning of demanding task on 1 October." His official title will be "chief negotiator in charge of leading the Commission Taskforce for the Preparation and Conduct of the Negotiations with the United Kingdom" under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The UK has not yet triggered the exit procedure under Article 50, and British prime minister Theresa May suggested it is unlikely the UK will launch the process before the end of the year. Michel Barnier will report directly to Juncker and will have a team of experts at his disposal.  He will be regularly invited to the the meeting of the commissioners to brief the college on the negotiations. Juncker said he wanted "an experienced politician for this difficult job", adding: "Michel is a skilled negotiator with rich experience in major policy areas." Most of the negotiations are nevertheless expected to be done by the council, representing member states.  They will have to navigate through the difficult two-year negotiations and find a balance between the UK's access to the single market in exchange for some level of freedom of movement from and within the bloc.  Barnier's France has been urging for a tough exit deal for Britain, as French president Francois Hollande faces challenge ahead of next year's presidential elections from far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who wants France to hold a referendum on its membership.

After the events in Nice, some citizens justifiably complained about the failure of the security measures, in an event celebrating the National Day of France. Furthermore, some of them have announced that they were going to ask the courts to decide who and to what extent was guilty for these criminal "lapses" in the procedures and measures for ensuring people's safety in a public event, which was known and prepared months in advance!!! What was the reaction of the "state"? More specifically, of some of those wallowing in the luxury of the privileges offered by the high official institutions, starting with impotent Hollande himself? They got offended!!! How can that be, some lowly citizens daring to accuse Its Majesty, the State, of failing to honor its contractual obligations???!!! And to add insult to injury, the Internal Affairs minister has announced the subjects of the state of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity that from now on, they can expect events like the one in Nice all the time, events which the state won't be able to prevent in the future, just like it wasn't able to deal with them in the past, as a result of universal fatality!!! The same chilling wind has started blowing in Germany, as, in less than two weeks, there have been three events involving lethal violence in public. So what is the State doing? Sleeping on the job? Who cares about all the paperwork, plans, resolutions and stamps put on who knows what papers, when people are getting killed by bullets, axes or machetes, or by devastating explosions? It is clear that somebody, and not just some persons, but institutions of the state, if not the State itself, is seriously, criminally liable to its citizens!!! It seems the time has come for citizens to hold the state to account. To note the failure to meet the contractual obligations and to plan the restructuring of the institutions that we collectively call the State from the ground up.

President Francois Hollande has been trying throughout his term to reduce unemployment, long around 10 percent.  Left-wing rebels, who have already failed twice by just two votes in their bid to win a censorship motion against the bill, said they would make a last-ditch attempt to muster 60 signatures from MPs to seize France's Constitutional Council for "non respect of parliamentary debate" after the prime minister rushed through the law without a vote for the third time.  Despite the final vote, leftist unions insisted the fight to see the law scrapped - which has seen dozens of sometimes violent mass protests in recent months and blockades of fuel depots - will continue after a "summer pause". "The anger is still there. The government hasn't seen the end of this," said Philippe Martinez, whose CGT union has spearheaded militant opposition to the law. FO, another leftist union, said that the final debate on the law should have been postponed "for democratic reasons" given the "context linked to terror attacks and the debate going on in parliament on prolonging the state of emergency". The small and medium-sized businesses union, CGPME has dismissed the law, saying it "won't help in any way to create jobs". The larger employers' union Medef has called the reform "failed" as it watered down several key points but said it brings progresses in some areas. In a scathing editorial, Le Monde, the daily newspaper of reference, said the government had "pulled off the feat of turning this 'great social reform' into a fiasco" due to a "calamitous method" that has split the Left, the labour and employers' unions.

Speaking in Brussels on Monday, French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said: "It would be unbelievable if the death penalty was re-established in Turkey". He said Turkish reformists should ask themselves if they wanted progress to be "abruptly stopped" and that the EU would make "no concessions on values". German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: “Reintroduction of the death penalty would prevent successful negotiations to join the EU”.  Steffen Seibert, chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, said in Berlin that Merkel had phoned Erdogan.  “A country that has the death penalty can't be a member of the European Union and the introduction of the death penalty in Turkey would therefore mean the end of accession negotiations”, he said.  Nato does not require its members not to execute people, but the defence alliance reinforced the EU’s appeals on Monday.   Its secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, also phoned the Turkish president. “Being part of a unique community of values, it is essential for Turkey, like all other allies, to ensure full respect for democracy and its institutions, the constitutional order, the rule of law and fundamental freedoms”, Stoltenberg said afterward. In a sign of the mood in Ankara, Egemen Bagis, Erdogan’s former EU affairs minister, said on social media: “Do you think Turks care about what EU states at this point? We are furious”. “EU should support Turkey not Feto”, he added, referring to Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who lives in the US and who was also accused of plotting Erdogan’s downfall.  Speaking in a statement on Monday, John Bass, the US ambassador to Turkey, said: "Unfortunately, some ... public figures have speculated that the United States in some way supported the coup attempt. This is categorically untrue, and such speculation is harmful to the decades-long friendship between two great nations".  He said that if Turkey submitted an extradition request for Gulen, then it would be "considered" by US courts.

  In a banking system built on the foundation of money being created by banks through granting loans and fractional reserves, insolvency is the natural state of things.  In this context, the confidence of the depositors and the guarantees granted by the state, along with the permanent support of the central banks, represent essential conditions for the functioning of financial institutions. "The truth about banks" is the title of an article from the Finance & Development magazine of the IMF (author's note vol. 53, no. 1, March 2016), in which the authors, Michael Kumhof and Zoltan Jakab, write that "banks create new money when they grant loans, a phenomenon which can start and exacerbate financial crises".   Creating money out of thin air represents "a critical vulnerability of financial systems" for two reasons which have been known at least since the time of the Great Depression in the first half of the 20th century. First of all, "if banks are free to create money when they grant loans, then that amplifies the potential to create cyclical booms and busts, especially when banks mistakenly assess the debtors' repayment ability", according to the economists of the IMF.

France has suggested it is prepared to reach a deal to allow Britain to limit free movement of EU migrants while retaining access to the Single Market.  Michel Sapin, France’s finance minister, said that “everything is on the table” as he appeared to break ranks with the rest of the European Union.  Until now European leaders have insisted that Britain must continue to let in EU migrants if it wants to enjoy the benefits of free trade.  But Mr Sapin told BBC Two’s Newsnight on Wednesday night: “Everything will be on the table because Britain will make proposals, and we will negotiate all these aspects with a desire to come to an agreement.  “Britain won’t be in the same position as it was beforehand. Things will change. Things have already changed. We return to zero. As we say in France, a clean slate.  “When we negotiate with a country, a third party, Norway, Switzerland to take countries that are very close, we discuss all subjects: under what conditions there is freedom of movement of people; freedom of movement of goods; of capital.  “That is something that is very important for the UK with all the questions about financial services. So we discuss everything.”

 The comments represent a significant boost to Britain. Earlier this week, Mr Cameron attempted to lay the groundwork for Brexit negotiations by warning European leaders that they will have to reform free movement if Britain is to retain close economic ties with the continent.  In his final meeting with EU leaders before standing down as Prime Minister, Mr Cameron claimed that British voters backed a Brexit because people believe the country has “no control” of its borders.

Although inflation in Italy has slowed to next to nothing, it is still saddled with the effects of earlier inflation and so is uncompetitive. What the advent of the euro has done to Italy – and also to several other countries – is to impose Germanic values in one sphere while having very little effect on performance in most others. It is the combination of Germanic money and Italian practices that is so devastating.  One clear lesson from this is that the EU is far from being the only factor affecting economic performance in Europe. Within the EU, it is possible to do things relatively well, and it is also possible to do things relatively badly. (The same is true for countries outside the EU.) But the Italian experience also makes it clear that the various things the EU supposedly does to improve economic performance aren’t worth very much. Yes, Italy is in the single market and enjoys all the much-vaunted advantages of that arrangement: it has a seat at the table when regulations and standards are framed; these rules apply both in Italy and across the single market; no customs forms are needed when Italian goods head northward; no tariffs are encountered.  Similarly, when Italian goods and services are sold to other eurozone countries there are no problems about exchange rate uncertainty or the cost of changing money. Yet Italy has not been carried forward on a wave of prosperity brought about by the absence of form-filling at borders and the convenience of operating in a common currency. Funny that. It may have had some very successful companies, but Italy has rarely been blessed with stable and effective government. This is why Italy has traditionally been an extremely europhile country. Most Italians felt quite relaxed about Rome ceding power to Brussels. But now, in reaction to recent appalling economic performance, coupled with the EU’s imposition of an unelected “technocratic” prime minister in 2011, more and more Italians are thinking radically about the future. In a recent opinion poll, 58pc of Italians said they wanted a referendum on EU membership and 48pc said that they would vote to leave the EU.  Leaving the euro would be a good start. If the new lira dropped by 20pc-30pc, as it probably would, within a couple of years Italy would be enjoying an export boom as it retook market share from other countries, mostly in Europe. The result would be a resumption of decent economic growth and a fall in unemployment.  Come to think of it, is that a key reason why many business leaders in the countries to the north are pretty keen to keep Italy in?

The European Commission is set to present a new draft of its data-exchange pact with the US, the Privacy Shield, in early July.  EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova told EUobserver in a recent interview that the most contentious issues had been agreed by Washington and Brussels.  These concerned access to data by US security services and bulk collection of people’s personal information.  “We reached an accord on more precise listing of cases when bulk collection can occur and a better definition of how our American partners understand the difference between bulk collection which may be justified and mass surveillance without any purpose, which is not tolerable”, she said.  “These specific points have already been finished and put down in written form”.  The shield is to replace the 15 year-old Safe Harbour pact that failed to protect the privacy of EU nationals whose data was transferred to firms, such as Facebook, based in the US.  The EU Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidated the harbour treaty last year, due in part, to revelations by Edward Snowden, a former US intelligence contractor, of mass-scale US snooping on Europeans. The EU commission and the US, after two years of talks, proposed the shield treaty as a replacement earlier this year. But the EU's main regulatory body on privacy, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, criticised the draft in the strongest possible terms.  The body is composed of EU states’ national data supervisors and EU officials.  Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, its chair, said in April that the shield would fail to protect people's data. “The possibility that is left in the shield and its annexes for bulk collection … is not acceptable," she said.  She sent the draft back to the EU commission, which is now set to present the updated version. That text becomes binding the moment it is adopted by the 28 commissioners, with no subsequent input from the EU Council or MEPs.

Here is a longer extract from Nigel Farage's controversial 'victory' speech:  "If the predications now are right this will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people. We have fought against the multinationals, against the big merchant banks, against big politics, against lies against lies, corruption and deceit and today honesty and decency and belief in nation I think now is going to win.  We will have done it without having to fight, without a single bullet having been fired.  I hope this victory brings down this failed projects and brings us to a Europe of sovereign nation states trading together.  Let June the 23rd go down in our history as our independence day."

Before referendum campaigning paused following the tragic murder of Jo Cox, there was growing disbelief among leading Remainers – the careerists, the big businessmen, the Bilderbergers, the Davos groupies and that tragic subset of my own trade that sees the journalist’s job as being to propitiate the governing elite – that polls should show a consistent lead for the Leave camp. It is disbelief born of their almost complete detachment from the realities of life outside London’s more exclusive postal districts. In their blissfully ignorant private world, they applaud each other’s existences, praise each other’s insights, and rejoice in their smug membership of an elite in which they feel safe because its ways are beyond democratic will: until now. As their presumptions and assumptions have been assaulted and undermined they have flailed about in panic: witness the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a straight face and to the embarrassment even of his supporters, promising an austerity budget to punish the nation should it vote Leave – even though he must have known a combination of his own MPs, the SNP and Labour would never allow such a measure through parliament...In the real world, as some politicians have belatedly recognized, people want change. They dislike being told that the United Kingdom cannot run itself. They deplore doomsayers who have lost faith in their country. They are angry that their country’s borders are open not just to geniuses with PhDs, nurses, teachers, plumbers, electricians and others who can contribute to it, but to welfare tourists, pickpockets, rapists and murderers. They resent a foreign power overruling their courts and their elected government. They are frustrated at being unable to change key policies when they vote. They detest contributing £8.5 billion a year net for Brussels to spend in countries less efficient, less productive and more corrupt than ours. They have had enough, above all, of being told that unless the UK concedes in perpetuity to foreign rule it will be worthless, and face ruin, danger and unremitting failure.

 

Let there be no illusion about the trauma of Brexit. Anybody who claims that Britain can lightly disengage after 43 years enmeshed in EU affairs is a charlatan, or a dreamer, or has little contact with the realities of global finance and geopolitics.  Stripped of distractions, it comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error.

For some of us - and we do not take our cue from the Leave campaign - it has nothing to do with payments into the EU budget. Whatever the sum, it is economically trivial, worth unfettered access to a giant market.  We are deciding whether to be guided by a Commission with quasi-executive powers that operates more like the priesthood of the 13th Century papacy than a modern civil service; and whether to submit to a European Court (ECJ) that claims sweeping supremacy, with no right of appeal.  It is whether you think the nation states of Europe are the only authentic fora of democracy, be it in this country, or Sweden, or the Netherlands, or France - where Nicholas Sarkozy has launched his presidential bid with an invocation of King Clovis and 1,500 years of Frankish unity.

Why is George Soros selling stocks, buying gold and making “a series of big, bearish investments”? If things stay relatively stable like they are right now, these moves will likely cost George Soros a tremendous amount of money. But if a major financial crisis is imminent, he stands to make obscene returns. So does George Soros know something that the rest of us do not? Could it be possible that he has spent too much time reading websites such as The Economic Collapse Blog? What are we to make of all of this?  The recent trading moves that Soros has made are so big and so bearish that they have even gotten the attention of the Wall Street Journal…Worried about the outlook for the global economy and concerned that large market shifts may be at hand, the billionaire hedge-fund founder and philanthropist recently directed a series of big, bearish investments, according to people close to the matter.  Soros Fund Management LLC, which manages $30 billion for Mr. Soros and his family, sold stocks and bought gold and shares of gold miners, anticipating weakness in various markets. Investors often view gold as a haven during times of turmoil. Hmmm – it sounds suspiciously like George Soros and Michael Snyder are on the exact same page as far as what is about to happen to the global economy.  You know that it is very late in the game when that starts happening…One thing that George Soros is particularly concerned about that I haven’t been talking a lot about yet is the upcoming Brexit vote. If the United Kingdom leaves the EU (and hopefully they will), the short-term consequences for the European economy could potentially be absolutely catastrophic…Mr. Soros also argues that there remains a good chance the European Union will collapse under the weight of the migration crisis, continuing challenges in Greece and a potential exit by the United Kingdom from the EU.  “If Britain leaves, it could unleash a general exodus, and the disintegration of the European Union will become practically unavoidable,” he said.

Peter Mandelson, the former EU trade commissioner and ex-business secretary, said Schäuble’s comments “finally knocks on the head the leave campaign’s claim that we can leave the EU and still enjoy the benefits of the single market”.  “We cannot leave the club and continue to use its facilities,” the Labour peer said. “Being outside the single market wold be a hammer blow to the UK economy. Our future trade [would] be hit and our manufacturing sector, which relies on the single market’s free movement of goods and people, [would] be at risk. This is the cold reality of Brexit that the British people must face. If we leave we lose the economic gains of being the world’s largest free-trade zone, putting jobs and livelihoods at risk.”  Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary, said of Schäuble’s comments: “To quote Mandy Rice-Davis, he would say that, wouldn’t he? … What I call the realpolitik underneath the surface is that they don’t want to get into spats. Of course they don’t. We’re a friend, we cooperate in Nato, the G8 and G20. Mr Schauble’s bound to say what he said. Come on. Don’t tell me that Mr Osborne hasn’t been on that line to him almost permanently for the last few weeks …“You’ll probably get a load of these statements. Every finance minister in Europe is going to line up. They’ve probably got them every day between now and the referendum.”

The leave campaign has said it does not want to be in the single market, because it would not want the UK to have free movement. But its leading advocates, including Boris Johnson and Gove, dismiss the idea that Germany or other EU countries would impose trade tariffs given they sell the UK more in manufactured goods than they buy.

Three-month interbank offered rates in Riyadh have suddenly begun to spiral upwards, reaching the highest since the Lehman crisis in 2008.  Reports that the Saudi government is to pay contractors with tradable IOUs show how acute the situation is becoming. The debt-crippled bin Laden group is laying off 50,000 construction workers as austerity bites in earnest. Societe Generale’s currency team has advised clients to short the Saudi riyal, betting that the country will be forced to ditch its long-standing dollar peg, a move that could set off a cut-throat battle for global share in the oil markets.  Francisco Blanch, from Bank of America, said a rupture of the peg is this year’s number one “black swan event” and would cause oil prices to collapse to $25 a barrel. Saudi Arabia’s foreign reserves are still falling by $10bn (£6.9bn) a month, despite a switch to bond sales and syndicated loans to help plug the huge budget deficit.  Can Saudi Arabia weather the current storm?   The country’s remaining reserves of $582bn are in theory ample – if they are really liquid – but that is not the immediate issue. The problem for the Saudi central bank (SAMA) is that reserve  depletion automatically tightens  monetary policy.  Bank deposits are contracting. So is the M2 money supply. Domestic bond sales do not help because they crowd out Saudi Arabia’s wafer-thin capital markets and squeeze liquidity. Riyadh now plans a global bond issue.  While crude prices have rallied 80pc to almost $50 a barrel since mid-February, this has not yet been enough to ease Saudi Arabia’s financial crunch.  The rebound in crude is increasingly fragile in any case as tough talk from the US Federal Reserve sends the dollar soaring, and Canada prepares to restore 1.2m barrels a day (b/d) of lost output. “We feel that markets have moved too high, too far, too soon. We still face a large inventory overhang and supply outages are reversible,” said BNP Paribas. Total chief Patrick Pouyanne told the French senate last week that prices could deflate as fast as they rose. “The market won’t come back into balance until the end of the year,” he said. Mr Pouyanne said the collapse in annual oil and gas investment to $400bn – from $700bn in 2014 – would lead to a global shortage of 5m barrels by 2020 and another wild spike in prices, but first the glut has to be cleared.  The oil rally is now at a make-or-break juncture. A growing number of oil traders warn that speculative purchases of “paper barrels” by hedge funds have decoupled from fundamentals. There is usually a seasonal slide in demand over the late summer. 

Over the last few weeks, several German politicians have criticized the ultralax monetary policy adopted by the ECB, which cut the policy rate to zero in March. The officials in Berlin are saying that this measure affects those Germans who save money. (A.V.)  Mario Draghi said that the ECB is ready "to use all the available instruments" to stimulate the rise of prices in the Eurozone, but expressed his confidence in the effects of the measures passed by the bank so far.  "Our policies work, they are efficient", said Draghi, and he added: "It just takes time for those measures to produce their effects in full".  The president of the ECB also stressed that aggressive measures, the kind of "money thrown from helicopters", has not even been brought up in this week's meeting of the council of governors.  Yesterday, the ECB decided not to change the interest rate, after it cut it to a historic low in its March meeting, in an attempt to boost inflation.  The ECB kept the policy rate at zero, while the interest on the marginal lending facility was kept at 0.25%, and the interest rate on deposits was kept at - -0.40%. 

Regulators from some of Europe's biggest markets will take centre stage at this year's EUROMAT Gaming Summit which will take place at the Majestic Hotel in the heart of Barcelona.  The latest programme for the Summit shows that Marta Espasa, the Director General for Gaming in Catalonia will open the programme along with the European Commission's top official Harrie Temmink. Mr. Temmink will then join several other European regulators for a panel discussion including:

     - Peter Naessens from the Belgian Gaming Commission;

     - Elisabetta Poso from the Administration of State Monopolies, Italy;

     - Carlos Hernandez Rivera, Director General of Gaming, Spain;

     - Fernando Prats, Madrid Regional Government, Spain.

Eduardo Antoja, President of EUROMAT and Chairman of the panel discussion with regulators said: "Regulation makes or breaks our industry so having so many top gaming officials from European markets together for one session is a real added value of this year's summit. Operators and manufacturers from across the industry should be there if they want to get a valuable insight into the thinking of the people making decisions that have a direct impact on the industry". Other panel sessions at this year's summit include:

     -What does convergence mean for the land-based gaming industry in Europe?

     - Player tracking: Does it help to improve responsibility?

     - Are manufacturers or operators driving the gaming machine market in Europe?

     Delegate numbers are set to soar with industry leaders and regulators sharing their thinking on how the European market is evolving.

The rulings issued by the courts in the lawsuits filed by the National Consumer Protection Authority (ANPC) against banks apply to all similar loan contracts, the Constitutional Court of Romania ruled yesterday (CCR), which has rendered a ruling on the unconstitutionality exception raised concerning art. 12 and 13 of the Law no. 193/2000 concerning abusive clauses in contracts concluded between traders and consumers, as announced by the Parakletos Association in a press release. He explained that the exception was invoked by four banks in the lawsuits they are involved in with the ANPC concerning the existence of abusive clauses in the contracts they concluded with consumers. "The CCR has rejected the exception, meaning that a ruling in favor of the ANPC has erga omnes effects, in other words it applies to all contracts of that nature", according to Parakletos. So far, the ANPC has won several such lawsuits in the first circuit, with the banks, the one against OTP has also been won in the last circuit.  In October 2013, the provisions of articles 12 and 13 of the Law no. 193/2000 concerning abusive clauses in contracts concluded between professionals and consumers, with the modifications that were made to them by the Law no. 76/2012 for the implementation of the Law no. 134/2010 concerning the Civil Procedure Code. Article 12 stipulates: "If the use of adhesion contracts which include abusive clauses are found, the control entities stipulated in Art. 8 (ed. note: the authorized agents of the National Consumer Protection Agency and authorized specialists of other entities of the public administration, depending on their competences) will notify the court from the domicile, or the headquarters of the professional, and demanding that the professional be required to amend the ongoing contracts, by removing the abusive clauses they may contain. (...) The consumer protection associations (...) can sue professionals that use adhesion contracts that contain abusive clauses, with the courts stipulated in paragraph (1), and ask the latter to decide the cessation of their use, by eliminating the abusive clauses". Article 13 states: "The court, if it finds the existence of abusive terms in the contract, requires the professionals to change all ongoing adhesion contracts, as well as to eliminate all abusive clauses from boilerplate contracts, meant to be used as part of the professional activity". There are several ongoing "class action" lawsuits filed by the ANPC, especially against banks.  The Parakletos Association has intervened in seven of the ANPC cases against the banks, as a third party. The leaders of Parakletos state that, through the ruling in the ANPC/OTP Bank case, lays the groundwork for the straightening of all the contracts between professionals and consumers, when they contain abusive clauses, without the consumers in question having to resort to individual lawsuits.