Recital 81

(81) Consumers facing difficulties in meeting their financial commitments stand to benefit from specialised help on managing their debts. Financial difficulties cover a wide variety of situations, for example among many others, having delayed the repayment of debt for more than 90 days. The objective of debt advisory services is to help consumers facing financial difficulties and guide them to repay, as far as possible, their outstanding debts, while maintaining a decent level of life and preserving their dignity. That personalised and independent assistance may include legal counselling, money and debt management as well as social and psychological assistance. The assistance should be provided by professional operators which are not creditors, credit intermediaries, providers of crowdfunding credit services, credit purchasers or credit servicers, and are independent from them. Member States should ensure that debt advisory services provided by independent professional operators are made available, directly or indirectly and with only limited charges, to consumers. Those charges should in principle only cover operating expenses and not place an unnecessary burden on the consumers who experience or might experience difficulties in meeting their financial commitments. Where possible, consumers facing difficulties in repaying their debts are referred to debt advisory services before the enforcement proceedings are initiated. Debt advisory services should be easily accessible for consumers, taking into account for example consumers’ place of residence and also their language. Member States remain free to maintain or introduce specific requirements for debt advisory services. Creditors have a role to play in preventing over-indebtedness through the early detection and support of consumers experiencing financial difficulties. For that reason, creditors should have processes and policies in place for the detection of such consumers to ensure they can effectively refer them to easily accessible debt advisory services.

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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.