This article explains how the new consumer-credit directive changes the balance between public enforcement and private consumer claims, including the implications for national implementation.
Administrative supervision becomes the main mechanism
The new consumer-credit directive gives administrative market supervision priority, according to Aneta Wiewiórowska-Domagalska and Maciej Bujalski. They point to Article 44 and recitals 90–92, which require a complete system of public enforcement backed by sanctions imposed by competent supervisory authorities. The change reflects a wider set of duties placed on lenders, including documenting creditworthiness assessments, maintaining appropriate remuneration policies and ensuring staff have suitable competences. Those obligations are difficult to enforce effectively through separate court cases brought by individual consumers. The directive therefore makes administrative sanctions the principal response, requiring them to be effective, proportionate and deterrent. For public bodies designing implementation arrangements or buying supporting services, the mechanism matters: enforcement capacity must be planned as a functioning system rather than as a collection of individual claims.
Private claims remain possible, but are not compulsory
The directive does not require Poland to retain or introduce a private-law remedy such as the sanction of free credit, known in Poland as SKD. Member states may make such a remedy available, but it is optional and operates under a different standard if adopted. The authors say a private sanction must be effective and proportionate, but does not have to be deterrent. General prevention is instead assigned to administrative penalties, whose purpose includes removing the benefit gained from a breach and signalling the consequences to other businesses. This distinction is important for procurement and regulatory design because a public enforcement arrangement cannot be treated as interchangeable with a consumer-litigation channel. A private remedy may supplement supervision, but it cannot replace the leading public function required by the directive.
Poland must rebuild the national sanctions framework
The authors argue that the directive has a complete character, meaning national lawmakers cannot set a consumer-protection standard either higher or lower than the one it establishes. They also say earlier Court of Justice case law on private sanctions cannot simply be transferred to remedies adopted under the new rules. Previous judgments weighed effectiveness, proportionality and deterrence together, while private sanctions under the new directive are assessed through effectiveness and proportionality. Case law remains broadly relevant to administrative sanctions, which retain all three characteristics. Wiewiórowska-Domagalska and Bujalski support supplementing public penalties with private remedies as a safeguard if public enforcement fails, while warning that free credit should not be the only private option. The resulting choices will affect courts, lenders and claims-management businesses.
IN NUMBERS
The procurement lesson is that national implementation must specify which functions belong to supervisory authorities and which, if any, are left to private redress. The public system is required to lead; any private mechanism must fit the directive’s narrower framework.
Reported from rp.pl, 2026-10-23. The Tender Wire is published by Otnox.
