Suchergebnisse

Abstract
The awareness that consumer over-indebtedness is a problem which needs to be tackled through specific measures most clearly emerged at the end of a period in which increased availability of retail financial services was presented as a means to promote consumers' welfare. While, on the one hand, over-indebtedness is regarded as a problem to be counteracted, European law and policy, on the other hand, promote indebtedness, leading to a fragile equilibrium between opposing purposes which permeate the regulatory framework. How can the two objectives be reconciled, allowing for well-ordered development of a credit-based economy in which debtors in financial trouble are not left behind? This paper suggests the necessity of taking a holistic approach to over-indebtedness, starting from the assumption that, rather than being the manifestation of individual inability to properly deal with finance, the phenomenon is inherent to a credit economy and that modern law must therefore tackle it systematically through a combination of measures: private and public, contractual and non-contractual, preventive and curative, national and supranational. While articulating a critique of some of the rationales underlying 'debt law', the paper highlights the necessary interrelation between the possible legal strategies against household over-indebtedness and the need to coordinate them in order to reach an adequate level of protection.

Of the 41 HIPCs, 11 are classified by the IMF and World Bank as conflict-affected. Can debt relief reduce the level of violent conflict in these countries? By providing additional resources to finance broad-based public spending, debt relief could help to redress the grievances that contribute to conflict. It could also reduce the ability of those motivated by greed to recruit followers, since the incomes, and therefore the grievances of followers, will fall if they benefit from broad-based public spending. But four things can go wrong with the use of debt relief in this way. First, the war party may prevail over the peace party in government, especially if the war party profits directly from conflict. Second, the fiscal system may be so institutionally weak that it cannot achieve the promised fiscal transfer even if the peace party prevails. Third, the rebel leaders may capture most of the fiscal transfer, leaving the grievances of their followers to ferment into further conflict. Fourth, a fiscal transfer that could have prevented conflict may be insufficient to stop a war once it begins, since rebels will seek out war-related income (and external finance) that may substantially exceed any promised post-war fiscal transfer. Hence, other forms of international action will be necessary alongside debt relief to end conflict.