Comparative Perspectives of Consumer Over‐Indebtedness – A View from the UK, Germany, Greece, and Italy, Editor: Federico Feretti. (The Hague, Eleven International Publishing, 2016), 390 pp. Price £78.50. ISBN 978‐94‐6236‐673‐2

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/iir.1261
• Author: Joseph Spooner
• Published date: 01 December 2016
• Date: 01 December 2016

Book Review

Comparative Perspectives of Consumer

Over-Indebtedness –A View from the UK,

Germany, Greece, and Italy, Editor: Federico

Feretti. (The Hague, Eleven International

Publishing, 2016), 390pp. Price £78.50. ISBN

978-94-6236-673-2

Joseph Spooner*

Law Department, London School of Economics

This timely edited volume of 21 chapters emanates from a European Commission

Civil Justice Programme project –‘Consumer Over-indebtedness, Responsible

Lending and the Insolvency of Natural Persons: the need for a Comprehensive

Reform to Protect Consumers in Financial Difficulty’–featuring collaboration

among academics in the UK, Germany, Greece and Italy. The papers themselves

derive from presentations delivered by academics and other expert stakeholders at

workshops organised by the research project’s leaders.

1

These origins mean that

this is a particularly solidly structured volume on household over-indebtedness

and legal and regulatory responses to this problem. The book first outlines the

position of EU law in relation to consumer (and mortgage) credit regulation,

cross-border insolvency and unfair contract terms (with a particularly interesting

discussion of the ‘Spanish mortgage saga’CJEU case law). It divides subsequently

into symmetrical sections composed of chapters discussing similar issues in respect

of each of the four countries studied. The sections thus consider three primary

themes:

•empirical conditions of household over-indebtedness

•ex ante consumer protection regulation of household lending (including contract law

provisions)

•ex post treatment of household over-indebtedness through personal insolvency law

1. In the interests of full disclosure, I note that I provided a

presentation at one such workshop, although I did not contribute

to the edited volume.

Copyright © 2016 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int. Insolv. Rev., Vol. 25: 241–244 (2016)

Published online 20 October 2016 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/iir.1261