Recital 70

(70) The consumer should have the right to discharge his or her obligations before the date agreed in the credit agreement. As interpreted by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Lexitor ruling (13), the right of the consumer to a reduction in the total cost of the credit to the consumer in the event of early repayment of the credit includes all the costs imposed on the consumer. The reduction in the total cost of the credit to the consumer should be proportionate to the remaining duration of the credit agreement and should also include costs which are not dependent on the duration of that credit agreement, including those which are fully exhausted at the time of granting the credit. However, taxes and fees applied by and directly paid to a third party and which are not dependent on the duration of the credit agreement should not be taken into consideration when calculating the reduction, as those costs are not imposed by the creditor and cannot therefore be unilaterally changed by the creditor. However, fees charged by a creditor to the benefit of a third party should be taken into consideration when calculating the reduction. In the case of early repayment, the creditor should be entitled to a fair and objectively justified compensation for the costs directly linked to the early repayment, taking into account also any savings thereby made by the creditor. However, in order to determine the method of calculating the compensation, it is important to comply with several principles. The calculation of the compensation due to the creditor should be transparent and comprehensible to consumers already at the pre-contractual stage and in any case during the performance of the credit agreement. In addition, the calculation method should be easy for creditors to apply, and supervisory control of the compensation by the competent authorities should be facilitated. Therefore, and due to the fact that consumer credit is, given its duration and volume, not financed by long-term funding mechanisms, the ceiling for the compensation should be fixed in terms of a flat-rate amount. This approach reflects the specific nature of consumer credits and should not prejudice the approach in respect of other products which are financed by long-term funding mechanisms, such as fixed-rate mortgage loans.

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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.