Right to housing and evictions: the protection of the mortgage debtor in the EUCJ's case-law

In the last years, the issue of mortgage enforcement proceedings in Spain has been the subject of an extensive debate drawing attention to the deficiencies of such procedure in a situation of severe crisis like the one Spanish households were experiencing. Particularly, it was highly criticized because there has been traditionally quite restricted possibilities of opposition for the defendant. However, the system of mortgage enforcement, including the limitation of grounds of objection, had been repeatedly declared in conformity with the Constitution by the Constitutional Court. In this context, the role of the Court of Justice of the EU has been crucially important in fine-tuning the national legal provisions in light of the European legal instruments (Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts). Nonetheless, the fact that the solution found in EU law emanates from the sphere of consumer protection law should not overshadow the fact that the principle of effectiveness is the main element at the basis of the reasoning of the Court, which in an expression of the principle of effective judicial protection enshrined in Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.