The rationales of financial inclusion in the changing European private law

Abstract

This contribution traces the development and the politics of the idea of the inclusion of citizens in the financial market and in particular in the credit market. It shows that financial inclusion is fundamentally meant to perform both an economic and a social function and describes how that idea has been understood and implemented specifically in the multi-level European system. The policy of financial inclusion as understood at the European level is strongly characterized by a market rationale that is mostly concerned with granting access to the credit market and, as is now emerging more clearly, ensuring the stability of that market. The social function remains on the contrary less developed. Given this framework, the negative consequences of the inclusion of citizens in the financial market, which can manifest themselves as a form of social exclusion, have to be faced primarily by the law of the Member States, although this is bound to have repercussions at the supranational level.