Filenews 11 January 2022 - by Eleftheria Paizanos
After AKEL and other parties are preparing legislative proposals to put the brakes on the increases in the increased charges announced by two banks. It is not excluded that parties will work together to submit to the Plenum of the Parliament a consolidated bill, which will address the reactions of increased bank charges. Already, Hellenic Bank has applied the new charges as of 3 January 2022, while the Bank of Cyprus will apply them from 15 February.
Dipa, depending on the developments that will arise in today's session of the House Standing Committee on Commerce, which will discuss anew the increased charges on bank charges and the impact caused on consumers, will give instructions to the services of the Parliament to prepare a law proposal.
Specifically, the law proposal of DIPA will broaden the scope of the decree of the Minister of Finance, so that apart from natural persons, very small enterprises will also be included. At the same time, the bill will also expand the list of banking transactions with cap charges and the types of bank accounts included in the minister's decree.
The MP of DIPA Alekos Trifonidis spoke yesterday about unjustified, provocative and unacceptable charges. "The unaccountability of the banks continues to the detriment of consumers, who are in fact unprotected by the competent institutions, since both the Governor of the Central Bank and the Minister of Finance stated last week that they cannot intervene because the increases do not concern payment accounts with basic characteristics included in the decree issued by the Minister of Finance, but they concern other bank accounts, such as current accounts, which are held by the vast majority of our fellow citizens," he concluded.
Meanwhile, today, AKEL MP Costas Costas is expected to open his cards for the legislative initiative undertaken by AKEL (we wrote about it on Saturday), which will expand consumer protection. In particular, the proposal will seek to enable consumers to be able to establish more than one Payment Account with Basic Characteristics (EKABX) in different banks. It will also be attempted that the Payment Account with Basic Features includes all the services provided by the banks and not only the six services it currently allows. In addition, the scope of the decree will be broadened to cover transactions made by micro-enterprises, as it currently only concerns transactions carried out by natural persons. AKEL MP Costas Costas said that complaints from consumers came to him, who tried to convert their accounts into a EKABX. According to Mr. Kostas, the banks do not convert current accounts into EKABX, adding that in order to convert savings accounts into a EKABX, they ask for the overdrafts to be paid. In fact, he noted that banks make it a condition for consumers to sign a declaration that they will not open another account with another bank.
