There were 161 judgments in the WIBOR case. All of them are beneficial for banks

The banking sector does not expect a significant increase in court cases questioning WIBOR, and so far there have been 161 final judgments in this case favorable to banks – informed the chairman of the Polish Bank Association, Tadeusz Białek, during a meeting of the parliamentary committee.

“When it comes to WIBOR matters (…) As of today, we have 161 final judgments in cases related to WIBOR. Without exception, all of them are dismissal judgments. On the one hand, the courts do not find any grounds to question the WIBOR rate, but on the other hand they also find grounds to claim that banks incorrectly fulfilled their reporting obligations regarding the risk of changes in interest rates,” Białek said on Wednesday at a committee in the Sejm.

“We also have 259 non-final judgments in circulation that are favorable to banks and exactly 5 non-final judgments that are unfavorableand basically all of them, in the light of the CJEU judgment of February 12 (…), have no chance of standing in the second instance. Especially since the vast majority of them questioned WIBOR as such, and the CJEU clearly confirmed that the court cannot question WIBOR or examine this indicator. Therefore, from the point of view of court proceedings, this situation is extremely binary, so to speak. We do not expect any significant increase in these cases, taking this decision into account,” he added.

In February, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that a contract clause containing a benchmark such as WIBOR does not, in principle, in itself create a significant imbalance between the parties to the detriment of the consumer. The bank's information obligation does not oblige it to provide the consumer with detailed information on the methodology of the regulated reference index used to calculate the variable interest rate. (PAP Business)

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