The European Commission has given Spain two months to write the European Union’s new consumer credit rules into national law or face the Court of Justice of the European Union and a demand for financial penalties.
Brussels sent a reasoned opinion to Madrid on October 1 as part of its monthly infringements package. The same notice went to Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Ireland, France, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia.
The directive on credit agreements for consumers, Directive (EU) 2023/2225, had to be on the statute book in every member state by November 20, 2025. It replaces rules dating from 2008 and widens EU consumer protection to cover buy now, pay later schemes, micro-loans below €200 and crowdfunding credit.
The directive starts to apply on November 20, 2026, a date that falls before the Commission’s own two-month deadline for the 16 governments runs out.
The case was opened in January, when the Commission sent letters of formal notice to 23 member states that had not notified complete transposition. Seven of them, among them Germany, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden, have closed the gap since.
A reasoned opinion is the second stage of infringement proceedings. Where a government has simply failed to notify its transposition measures, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union lets the Commission ask the court to impose a lump sum or a daily fine in the very first ruling, skipping the second round of litigation normally required.
Spain has been down this road recently. In June the Commission referred it, alongside France, to the court over the delayed transposition of the bloc’s cybersecurity directive, more than a year after that deadline had passed.
The Spanish Government approved a draft Consumer Credit Agreements Bill on January 7, intended to transpose the directive, cap interest rates on revolving cards and fast credit and curb household over-indebtedness. The text has yet to return to the Council of Ministers for the second reading that would send it to parliament.
Until it does, Spanish borrowers remain covered by the framework agreed in 2008, drafted before smartphone lending and instalment checkouts existed.
The Commission did not say what it would do if the deadline passed without action, beyond reserving the right to go to court. Its own enforcement record suggests referral takes months rather than weeks, and a ruling longer still.
