Recital 15

(15) A number of Member States have applied Directive 2008/48/EC to areas not covered by its scope to enhance the level of consumer protection, while other Member States have different national rules regulating those areas stemming from market specificities, thereby maintaining certain divergences between the national law of different Member States with regard to those types of credits. In fact, several of the credit agreements not falling within the scope of Directive 2008/48/EC can be detrimental for consumers, including short-term high-cost credit agreements whose amount is typically lower than the minimum threshold of EUR 200 set out in that Directive. In that context, and with the aim of ensuring a high level of consumer protection and of facilitating the cross-border consumer credit market, this Directive should cover some agreements that were excluded from the scope of Directive 2008/48/EC, such as credit agreements for consumers involving a total amount of credit of less than EUR 200. Likewise, other potentially detrimental products, because of the high costs they entail or high fees in the case of missed payments, should be covered by this Directive, to ensure increased transparency and better consumer protection, resulting in higher consumer confidence. To that extent, hiring or leasing agreements with an option to buy, credit agreements in the form of an overdraft facility and where the credit has to be repaid within one month, credit agreements where the credit is granted free of interest and without any other charges, and credit agreements under the terms of which the credit has to be repaid within three months and only insignificant charges are payable should not be excluded from the scope of this Directive. However, for some of those credit agreements that were excluded from the scope of Directive 2008/48/EC and should be covered under this Directive, namely credit agreements involving a total amount of credit of less than EUR 200, credit granted free of interest and without any other charges and with only limited charges payable by the consumer for late payments and credit to be repaid within three months with only insignificant charges, Member States should be able to exclude the application of a defined and limited number of provisions of this Directive related to advertisement, pre-contractual information and contractual information, in order to avoid an unnecessary burden for creditors, taking into account the market specificities and the particular characteristics of those credit agreements, such as their shorter duration, while ensuring a higher level of consumer protection.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-07-30 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.