Judgment of the Court (Third Chamber) of 11 March 2020 (request for a preliminary ruling from the Fővárosi Törvényszék — Hungary) — Györgyné Lintner v UniCredit Bank Hungary Zrt.
(Case C-511/17) 1
(Reference for a preliminary ruling — Consumer protection — Directive 93/13/EEC — Unfair terms in consumer contracts — Foreign currency based loan contract — Article 4(1) — Consideration of all the other terms of the contract for the purpose of assessing the unfairness of the contested term — Article 6(1) — Examination by the national court of its own motion as to whether the clauses in the contract are unfair — Scope)
Language of the case: Hungarian
Referring court
Fővárosi Törvényszék
Parties to the main proceedings
Applicant: Györgyné Lintner
Defendant: UniCredit Bank Hungary Zrt.
Operative part of the judgment
1. Article 6(1) of Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts must be interpreted as meaning that a national court, hearing an action brought by a consumer seeking to establish the unfair nature of certain terms in a contract that that consumer concluded with a professional, is not required to examine of its own motion and individually all the other contractual terms, which were not challenged by that consumer, in order to ascertain whether they can be considered unfair, but must examine only those terms which are connected to the subject matter of the dispute, as delimited by the parties, where that court has available to it the legal and factual elements necessary for that task, as supplemented, where necessary, by measures of inquiry;
2. Article 4(1) and Article 6(1) of Directive 93/13 must be interpreted as meaning that, while all the other terms of the contract concluded between a professional and that consumer should be taken into consideration in order to assess whether the contractual term forming the basis of a consumer’s claim is unfair, taking such terms into account does not entail, as such, an obligation on the national court hearing the case to examine of its own motion whether all those terms are unfair.
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1 OJ C 402, 27.11.2017.