Liberal MEP Stolojan on Swiss franc loans: Collective solution needed, unless banks relax terms

Liberal MEP Theodor Stolojan says that the recent speech of Finance Minister Darius Valcov about Romanian holders of Swiss franc loans "was incredibly arrogant" and asserts that the solution to the issue could be individual, if the banks relax the terms for the debtors, or collective - in the opposite situation.

Photo credit: (c) ADRIAN CUBA/ AGERPRES ARCHIVE

"The solution cannot be other but individual, yet on one condition: that the banks understand that they truly need to relax the terms for the borrowers, which doesn't mean extending the installments over time, at the same interest rate. The banks must accept that they have a certain responsibility for what happened in Romania and therefore, when each individual contract is discussed, they should reduce the interest rate, find other formulas where the bank also takes over a part of these negative influences. (...) The banks must understand this, for they carry a great responsibility, from the moment they accepted to recommend to financially uninformed people, to people lacking financial education, to take out loans in Swiss francs. If, however, the banks don't understand this, a collective solution must be found by legal ways, just as it happened in other countries," Stolojan on Monday declared at the RFI station.

He pointed out that if the banks are unwilling to relax the loan terms, the Government and the central bank must find a collective solution.

"To the extent that commercial banks do not understand that they must hold factual individual talks on each credit agreement and that each bank needs to partially shoulder this formidable negative influence that hit all borrowers who took out loans in Swiss francs, the Government and the National Bank must reach a collective...