Germany’s Federal Court of Justice continues to elliminate from consumer credit contracts those fees which it regards as unfair, ruling out that on the grounds of the lack of counterperformance there is an imbalance between the parties rights and liabilities. Two recent decisions, dating November 2016 and May 2017 (XI ZR 552/15 and XI 308/15) extend the control of the unfair character of terms to the Bauspar contractual savings scheme,...

The Court of Justice of the European Union held on a request for a preliminary ruling (Kásler v OTP Jelzálogbank Zrt, C-26/13, 30 April 2014) concerning the allegedly unfair contractual term relating to the exchange rate applicable to repayments of a loan denominated in a foreign currency. This paper gives further explanations for the answers of the Court and analyses the relevance of these answers for the Romanian consumer of...

Germany’s Federal Court of Justice issued on 13 May 2014 two decisions (XI ZR 405/12 and XI ZR 170/13) stating that contractual term regarding the processing fee in consumer loans is unfair and thus ineffective. This paper briefly explains the reasons for the Court’s decisions, which may be of certain importance for the on-going debates among Romanian scholars.