Różnice w ocenie zdolności kredytowej konsumenta w państwach członkowskich UE jako ograniczenie jednolitego rynku kredytów – analiza w kontekście zasady minimalizacji danych z art. 5 RODO

It is the basic principle that every financial institution granting a loan – including a bank – is obliged to assess the creditworthiness of the customer who applies for such a loan. The banking law doctrine recognizes that this obligation is a public duty for the bank and results from the nature of the bank as an institution of public trust, which assesses creditworthiness also in the interest of depositors whose funds have been entrusted to the bank. The subject of the paper will be to present the situation and legal status in several Member States of the European Union with regard to detailed regulations regarding the assessment of creditworthiness, especially in the case of consumer credit. In general, EU Member States can be divided into three categories in this respect: the first is where the method and scope of capacity assessment are left to the lender’s own decision; the second one is where the guidelines for carrying out the capacity are included in the recommendations of the banking market supervisor; while the third one – the most strictly regulated category – has legal provisions specifying exactly how creditworthiness should be assessed. This issue and the differences in regulations at the national level have three important references. The first is the obligation to implement the assumption of ‘responsible lending’, the second is the risk of creating a barrier to the implementation of a single credit market in the EU, and the third is the principle of minimizing the scope of personal data processed on the basis of the provisions of the GDPR.