When Does Credit Stop Being Finance? Debt Collection before the CJEU

Cătălin Gabriel Stănescu, Reader in Law at Newcastle University and member of the European Commission’s Financial Services Users Group. Photo credit: BNP Paribas HQ, by Boubloub, via Wikimedia Commons A pending reference from the Greek Council of State brings an old question back before the Court of Justice: when credit is transferred to a purchaser and its administration and recovery are entrusted to a separate company, how should EU financial law classify the activities of that company? In Trapeza tis Ellados II, C-210/26, the Court is asked whether an undertaking engaged exclusively in credit servicing, without assuming credit risk, qualifies as a financial institution under the Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 on prudential requirements for credit institutions (Capital Requirements Regulation, CRR). In a 2021 article, I asked whether informal debt collection qualified as a financial service under EU law and what that qualification would mean from a legal perspective (pp 535-538). The…