The Franak Association on Tuesday questioned why the government is withholding details of the agreement with banks regarding the suspension of arbitration proceedings if that agreement is beneficial for Croatia, while also calling for the ‘urgent and immediate’ publication of the text of the agreement.
The Franak Association referred to yesterday’s article on the Index.hr portal titled ‘The government has reached an agreement with banks regarding the Swiss franc, the settlement is worth 2.5 billion kuna and is a secret’.
The association stated that the government does not justify its claim that the need to protect the right to restrict access to information prevails over the public interest, which needs to be determined by a proportionality test, the execution of which is unknown.
– Namely, it is not enough for a minister or prime minister to arbitrarily decide that a document should be marked ‘Confidential!’. Before classification, a proportionality assessment procedure in relation to the public interest must be conducted. Why hasn’t the Government of the Republic of Croatia provided the public with an explanation from the proportionality test to clarify the justification for the ‘Confidential!’ designation? Otherwise, we still believe that it is in the interest of Croatian citizens to know the details of the agreement with the banks based on which OTP, RBA, PBZ, ZABA, Erste, and Sberbank withdrew from the arbitration proceedings in Washington – wrote the Franak Association.
They also asserted that there is doubt whether this agreement was the reason for the government to present completely unfounded and controversial positions against Croatian and European law in its opinion to the EU Court regarding the Croatian case C-567/20, unfortunately in favor of the banks, while the European Commission opined that Croatian consumers, just like Hungarian and Polish ones, have the right to full restitution, even if it were legally prohibited.
However, Croatian law did not prohibit restitution; on the contrary, it prescribed a ban on conditioning conversion with any waivers of consumer rights, wrote the Franak Association.
Why did the government send a statement to the EU Court against consumers and in favor of banks, despite all relevant and binding EU court rulings? Does this have to do with the agreement with the banks? Does the government’s policy relate to the decision of six judges of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia that consumers would have no rights after conversion?, asked the Franak Association.
