PERSONAL OVER-INDEBTEDNESS IN EUROPEAN UNION AS A FACTOR OF SOCIAL EXCLUSION

Personal over-indebtedness can cause social exclusion, which means non participation and/or limited access to the labour market and education vulnerability to poverty and social isolation. The actual number of over people can be assessed, but due to the lack of a single definition of over-indebtedness it is difficult to carry out the above assessment. Almost certainly the number of over-indebted persons has increased due to the economic crisis. To avoid a situation in which creditors are losing their funds, and debtors often lose their proper place in society and become excluded, the EU developed counselling services for solving the problem of over-indebtedness and measures for debt repayment. These activities enable over-indebted people a new start in society and adequate economic participation. In the text the experiences and evaluations of speck measures related to the mitigation of over-indebtedness are presented. An effective system of prevention and alleviation of personal over-indebtedness is based on a balanced set of measures that can be grouped into four categories: prevention, addressing market related problem, resolution and rehabilitation and cross-cutting measures.