The New EU Consumer Credit Directive: What It Means for Greek Banks and NPL Servicers — Before and After 20 November 2026

The article was drafted by Alexandros Sarris & Magdalini Mavromichali, Senior Associates for Lexology on 9 September 2026

Introduction

Directive (EU) 2023/2225 (“CCD2”) replaces the 2008 Consumer Credit Directive (“CCD1”), updating EU consumer credit rules for a market that now includes Buy Now Pay Later (“BNPL”), digital origination, and — critically for Greece — a large stock of restructured and non-performing loans managed by third-party servicers. Greece has transposed CCD2 through Law 5317/2026 (Government Gazette, Series I, No. 108/10 July 2026), which goes beyond the EU floor by introducing a binding cap on interest rates and total borrowing cost.

The two regimes will not simply hand over from one to the other overnight. CCD1 — and the Greek instrument implementing it, Joint Ministerial Decision Z1-699/2010 — remains in force and continues to govern new consumer credit agreements right up until 20 November 2026. Only agreements concluded on or after that date fall under CCD2/Law 5317/2026. For banks still originating new lending and for NPL servicers managing existing books, this means two parallel legal regimes, applied by reference to the date an agreement is concluded, for some time to come. This article sets out what applies now, what changes, and where the practical risk sits for Greek banks and NPL managers.

Part I — The Regime Today: What Still Applies Until 20 November 2026

Any consumer credit agreement concluded before 20 November 2026 continues to be governed by the existing framework, and will remain so for its full life unless restructured in a way that creates a new agreement after that date (see Part III below). The key features of the current regime are:

• No statutory interest-rate or total-cost cap. Pricing of consumer credit — subject to the general usury and unfair-terms limits under the Civil Code and Law 2251/1994 — is set by each creditor. There is no APRC ceiling and no cap on the total amount repayable, unlike the regime that applies from 20 November 2026.
• Pre-contractual information under CCD1/JMD Z1-699/2010: creditors must provide the Standard European Consumer Credit Information form and a general information duty, but with less prescriptive formatting and content requirements than the incoming SECCI standard, and no explicit duty to disclose automated-decision-making or profiling.
• Creditworthiness assessment: required, but framed in general terms, without the “necessary, sufficient and proportionate data” standard or the explicit “no positive assessment, no credit” rule that CCD2 introduces.
• Right of withdrawal: the existing 14-day right already applies, broadly consistent with the incoming regime, though CCD2 clarifies certain aspects, particularly around linked contracts.
• No EU-derived pre-enforcement forbearance duty. Arrears handling today is governed by Greece’s own domestic infrastructure, developed independently of CCD1 — the Banking Code of Conduct (Law 4224/2013), the out-of-court debt settlement mechanism (Law 4738/2020), and Bank of Greece supervisory expectations. These frameworks are not being replaced — they will simply sit alongside a new EU-level statutory forbearance duty from 20 November 2026 (see Part III).
• Credit intermediaries: lightly regulated at EU level; Greece does not currently operate a dedicated consumer-credit intermediary licensing and registration regime comparable to the one introduced by Law 5317/2026.
• NPL servicing and credit purchasing: already comprehensively regulated under Law 4354/2015 (as most recently amended), which transposed the EU Credit Servicers and Credit Purchasers Directive (EU) 2021/2167. Servicers are licensed and supervised by the Bank of Greece, hold conduct-of-business obligations toward borrowers, and operate under their own register — entirely independent of the CCD1/CCD2 framework. This existing regime does not change with Law 5317/2026, though the new law’s definitions section expressly references it (see Part IV).

Today, Greek consumer lending operates without a statutory price cap, with a lighter-touch (though still meaningful) disclosure and affordability framework, and with arrears/forbearance and NPL servicing governed by separate, well-established domestic regimes that long predate CCD2.

Part II — What Changes From 20 November 2026

Law 5317/2026 was published on 10 July 2026, but Part A — the consumer credit regime transposing CCD2 — only becomes fully applicable on 20 November 2026, in line with the EU-mandated timetable. (By contrast, the distance-marketing provisions in Part B of the same law, transposing Directive (EU) 2023/2673, have already been applied since publication.) From 20 November 2026, the following become legally binding for any consumer credit agreement concluded on or after that date:

• A statutory APRC cap and total-cost cap (Articles 39-40) — new in Greek law, with no equivalent under the current regime: no agreement may carry an APRC above the Bank of Greece’s quarterly market average plus a ministerially-fixed uplift (30-50%), and non-card loans may not require total repayment exceeding 60%/70%/75% of original capital depending on term.
• A redesigned SECCI standard (Articles 9-14) with a mandatory, prominent first-page summary, an explicit “adequate explanations” duty, and a new disclosure requirement where pricing is based on automated processing or profiling.
• A binding, more prescriptive creditworthiness assessment standard (Articles 22-27): the “necessary, sufficient and proportionate” data test and the “no positive assessment, no credit” rule, backed by civil-law and administrative sanctions.
• A clarified withdrawal and early-repayment regime (Articles 34, 37-38), including linked-contract effects.
• A ban on unsolicited credit and new restrictions on tying/bundling (Articles 15, 21), directly affecting cross-sell of insurance or ancillary products.
• A “right to be forgotten” for cancer survivors: a ban on using oncological-diagnosis data for insurance products linked to credit, once five years have passed since the end of treatment.
• A statutory pre-enforcement forbearance duty (Article 44): for the first time, a binding legal requirement — not just domestic soft law or supervisory expectation — to consider forbearance before starting enforcement on an in-scope agreement.
• A new credit-intermediary licensing and registration regime (Articles 46-49), supervised by the Bank of Greece — a structure that does not currently exist for consumer-credit intermediaries specifically.
• Dual-track enforcement (Articles 59-60): civil-law consequences and administrative sanctions attach to breaches of the new obligations from this date.

What does not automatically change on 20 November: existing loan agreements concluded before that date are unaffected, and — subject to the classification question discussed in Part III — genuine modifications of those agreements that do not amount to a new credit agreement remain outside the new regime. The ministerial decision fixing the exact APRC uplift percentage is still pending — meaning the precise numerical cap will likely only be confirmed shortly before, or close to, the applicability date, leaving a compressed window for final repricing.

 

You can read the full article on Lexology: The New EU Consumer Credit Directive: What It Means for Greek Banks and NPL Servicers — Before and After 20 November 2026