The Parliamentary Committee on Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism is preparing joint proposals for a law on the issue of increased bank charges and consumer protection. At the same time, the debate will continue on the issue of protection from unfair clauses and micro-businesses.
The proposals appear to focus on extending the ability of consumers and small businesses to maintain a Basic Features Payment Account (BSPA), allowing them to enjoy consistently lower charges.
As stated by the Chairman of the Committee, DISY MP Kyriakos Hatzigiannis, following a discussion among the members of the Committee on the issue, the Committee will proceed with joint legislative proposals on the comparative fees of banks and on consumer protection legislation, in order for Cyprus to harmonise with European legislation on the issue.
He noted that "whenever and wherever we harmonise on the particular subject matter in particular, we simply take what we like or what we can create an argument that we have harmonised". He added that he did not respect the degree of harmonisation in terms of consumer protection and bank charges.
He also said that members of the Commission had studied in depth all the relevant legislation in order to provide answers to businesses and to the suffering accumulated by consumers who are victims of what he described as this unfair practice on the part of banks. He added that both the law dealing with consumer protection should be subject to changes and the law on comparative fees to bring about fairer pricing and conduct on the part of banks.
He also said that other discussions being held on unfair terms would remain as a chapter of separate discussion under the Financial Commissioner's legislation to cover small businesses. He expressed disappointment as, so far, there has been no response from the Executive, the Commissioners involved or other stakeholders on the issue and said the issue will be brought back to change the text to include small businesses.
He assured that in the end the law will win and not the approach that in the end the issue will be forgotten by MPs with no outcome.
AKEL MP Kostas Costa said that in today's session it was decided that on the basis of AKEL's law proposals, but also the suggestions of the President and other members of the Committee, a law proposal would be prepared by the Parliament's services on behalf of the Trade Committee as soon as possible.
He recalled that AKEL's law proposal aims to broaden the scope of consumer protection by extending the definition of consumer beyond natural persons, in particular to micro-enterprises, which will be able to maintain LBBs in more than one credit institution."
"With our proposal, we are essentially trying to do what the government should do, namely to extend the scope of protection of citizens," he said.
He also noted that they were still awaiting the implementation of the government's written commitment to table a bill to include micro-businesses in the definition of consumer, to protect them from abusive bank clauses, since the harmonisation legislation was passed last May.
He also criticised the fact that despite repeated calls by the Commerce Committee to Hellenic Bank and Bank of Cyprus to suspend the increases in charges until a solution is found, this has so far not been done. He also said that to date they have not received responses on issues relating to the price of buying cheque books and consumer complaints about the banks' practices for LGBs.
Source: Cyprus Times
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