Alþingi, the Icelandic Parliament, is to guarantee the immediate abolishment of indexation on mortgages and respect the laws on customer protection, as agreed in a resolution at a civic meeting organized by the Interest Association of Homeowners (HH) in Háskólabíó, Reykjavík, on Tuesday evening.
Alþingi. Photo by Páll Kjartansson.
At the meeting, the first lawsuit in Iceland against the indexation was introduced. Couple Theódór Magnússon and Helga Margrét Guðmundsdóttir, who are backed by HH and represented by lawyer Þórður H. Sveinsson, are suing the Housing Financing Fund (HFF) because of an indexed mortgage.
Helgi Hjörvar, MP for the Social Democrats and chairman of the parliament’s Economic Affairs and Trade Committee, told Stöð 2 this week that the HFF is deliberately providing false information.
However, HFF’s director Ólafur Garðarsson reasons that people can calculate how inflation will impact their mortgage and forget to take into account that salaries also increase in line with inflation, Fréttatíminn reports.
According to Fréttablaðið, a bill on a consumer credit loan, currently in discussion at parliament, was also brought up. HH has criticized the bill harshly but Minister of Industries and Innovation Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, who attended the meeting, defended the bill.
Other speakers included MP for the opposition’s Independence Party Pétur H. Blöndal, who spoke in favor of savers, and vice-chair of HH Guðmundur Ásgeirsson. Many of the more than 1,000 attendees were visibly angry.
ESA
