On September 11, 2025, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued an opinion in a preliminary ruling case concerning the use of the WIBOR benchmark rate in credit agreements.
The Advocate General confirmed the correctness of how WIBOR is determined and addressed the issue of banks’ information obligations, concluding that they had been carried out properly.
Courts Cannot Review the Methodology of WIBOR
According to the opinion, national courts cannot examine the methodology used to establish WIBOR. Such an assessment goes beyond the scope of EU Directive 93/13 on unfair terms in consumer contracts.
The Advocate General stressed that allowing national civil courts to review the methodology of key benchmark indices under Directive 93/13 would undermine the special system for managing critical benchmarks established by the EU legislature under the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR).
Transparency and Banks’ Information Duties
Banks are required to provide borrowers with information about the name of the benchmark, its administrator, and the impact of index increases on loan interest rates—and, according to the Advocate General, banks complied with these obligations.
The transparency requirement under Directive 93/13 does not obligate lenders to provide more detailed explanations of how the benchmark is calculated than what is mandated under the BMR.
Importantly, even if contract terms were deemed non-transparent, this alone would not be sufficient to invalidate them. For a term to be considered unfair, the interest rate would also have to deviate from prevailing market conditions.
Question on Abusive Clauses Deemed Irrelevant
The Advocate General did not answer the fourth question, which concerned the effects of declaring a clause abusive. Following CJEU guidance, this question was deemed irrelevant to the case.
Source: CEO.com.pl
