Company: BCDRF
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0000891478-25-000054
Chunk: 742

Company: Banco Santander, S.A.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 20-F
Chunk 742
---
 not have a material impact in the consolidated annual accounts. • CHF Polish Mortgage Loans: on 3 October 2019, the CJEU rendered its decision in relation to a judicial proceeding against an unrelated bank in Poland regarding the consequences of potentially unfair contractual clauses in CHF-indexed loan agreements. The CJEU left it up to national courts to decide in this regard, indicating that it is possible to invalidate a contract if it cannot be maintained without abusive terms and there are no explicit supplementary provisions that can replace these terms. On 15 June 2023, the CJEU issued its judgment in Case C-520/21, in which it confirmed that it is national law that is relevant to determine the effect of cancellation of a contract - respecting the principles arising from Directive 93/13/EEC. According to the ruling of the CJEU in that case, the bank's claims in excess of the repayment of the nominal amount of the loan's principal and, as the case may be, the payment of default interest are contrary to the objectives of Directive 93/13/EEC if they were to lead to a profit analogous to the one it intended to make from the performance of the contract and thus eliminate the deterrent effect. On 25 April 2024, the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court rendered a decision according to which: (i) in the event that a provision of an indexed or denominated loan agreement relating to the manner of determining the exchange rate of a foreign currency constitutes an abusive contractual term and is not binding, based on the current case law, it is not possible for this provision to be replaced by any other method of determining exchange rates under the law or prevailing practices; (ii) in the event that it is not possible to determine a foreign currency exchange rate binding for the parties in an indexed or denominated credit agreement, the agreement is not binding. Further, referring to the issues related to the cancellation of a credit agreement, the Supreme Court pointed out that: (i) if the bank has paid all or part of the credit amount to the borrower and the borrower has made repayments of the credit, independent claims for the repayment of the undue payment arise in favour of each party (the so-called two condition theory); (ii) the limitation period of the bank's claim for reimbursement of amounts paid under the credit begins from the day following the day on which the borrower challenged the bindingness of the terms of the agreement; (iii) there is no legal basis for either party to claim interest or other benefits