Towards a common operational European definition of over-indebtedness

With the expansion of access to credit and the provision of new products in financial services, consumer over-indebtedness is increasingly moving into the focus of the European public. Yet, so far there has not been a standard definition of over-indebtedness which is accepted throughout the Union. This is one of the reasons why there are no comparable statistics about the current state, extent and past development of over-indebtedness within individual Member States. Such a lack hampers the evaluation of policy measures and undermines any well-founded discussion about the effectiveness of prevention measures.

This is the background against which the European Commission arranged for a study by three partners: the Observatoire de l’épargne européenne (Paris, France), the University of Bristol, Personal Finance Research Centre (United Kingdom) and the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels, Belgium).

European Commission: DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities: Social Protection Social Inclusion: Activities: Studies: Common operational European definition of overindebtedness http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/spsi/docs/social_inclusion/2008/study_overindebtedness_en.pdf

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