Consumer Credit other than for House Purchase Regulation in the Czech Republic and Selected EU Countries

A transposition of 2014/17/EU changed consumer credit markets throughout the EU. In the Czech Republic the transposition by the act 257/2016 Coll. was taken as an opportunity to unify regulatory framework for all consumer credit regardless of a purchase purpose. At the same time this regulatory framework extension was motivated by adverse phenomena in a non-bank consumer credit sector such as predatory and usurious practices (regulatory arbitration, abuse of the social distress of debtors, credit cost obfuscation, pre-contract payments, insufficient or even none creditworthiness assessment and more). These issues were addressed by the market entry public regulation including employee's professional qualification requirements. The paper compares professional qualification regulation approach in the Czech Republic and eleven selected EU countries. In the Czech Republic, Hungary, Greece was adopted the public regulation approach which combines national regulator supervisory with accredited institutions examination. On the other hand, in Germany and the Netherlands was an approach closer to a private regulation. Croatia and Portugal still did not completely transposed 2014/17/EU and are facing a legal procedure from the Court of Justice of the EU. In the Czech Republic a new regulation significantly decreased a number of non-bank consumer credit providers and their market share is diminishing since the last economic crisis. Yet, a new option of regulatory arbitrage for predatory creditors appeared although with a very limited impact on the market.