Is the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive Fit to Effectively Tackle Abusive Debt Collection? A Critical Evaluation

The paper evaluates the adequacy of the existing EU legal framework – the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive - and the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU’s in tackling abusive non-judicial debt collection practices. For this purpose, it uses a matrix of analysis consisting of several building blocks required for an efficient regulation of non-judicial debt collection practices. The paper concludes that the current legal framework is insufficient and a harmonized sector-specific regulation is needed at EU level.