The President of the ECDN, Sandy Madar participated throughout January in the online seminar hosted by VVA Group and CEPS on the subject of Good Practices in Debt Advise, as a part of the Debt Advice tender by the European Commission.
The online seminar consisted of three separate parts with online meeting and following workshops, during which the participants could exchange experiences on fighting over-indebtedness in the Member states.
The first part started with an opening plenary with the Commissioner of Justice, Didier Reynders, who addressed the problem of over-indebtedness in Europe and argued that debt advise should be prioritized higher in the European Union. Afterwards the participants presented their experiences with profiling and predicting over-indebtedness and financial literacy.
During the second part the focus shifted to Utilised Based Detection and Ethics Codes for Debt Advice and Covenants with Creditors. On this Sandy had a presentation on Ethichs Codes for debt advice, where she presented the Ethics Code of the Danish member organization Den Sociale Retshjælp. A great deal of the participants were interested and the following workshop was the most well-attended.
For the third and final part of the seminar the participants talked about living wage calculations, Financial-transaction-based detection, and the design and implementation of the debt advice interventions.
The three seminars were interesting to attend and they show problem with over-indebtedness and need for good, qualified debt advice is finally on the agenda of the European Commission.
We look forward to continuing our collaboration with VVA and CEPS to fight over-indebtedness further promote free and qualified debt advise in the European Union.