THE INSOLVENCY OF THE NATURAL PERSON - FORGOTTEN REALM IN ROMANIA? NEW TRENDS IN APPROACHING CONSUMER OVER-INDEBTEDNESSCOMPARATIVE LAW.

AUSTRIA; UNITED Arab Emirates; SINGAPORE

The justification for the choice of this research topic lies in the recurrence of the increasingly dramatic financial situations in which natural persons find themselves in their capacity as simple individuals against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic, situations amplified by the lack of interest of the Romanian legislator that presently provided an almost non-existent answer and a remedy not valued and not accessed by the over-indebted consumer. The period we are going through has generated an economic and social collapse, and the insolvency of professional traders has created chain reactions through restructuring and layoffs, with many people losing their jobs and accumulating debt. In such a fragile context, an opportunity for reset and social revitalization would be to access the insolvency proceedings of the individual under Law no. 151/2015, entered into force in 2018. The reality is that this legal instrument is still in its infancy, so far only 25 people have actually accessed it. And yes, unfortunately, we can say that it is a legal instrument "covered in dust", left in the shadows and almost non-existent, "not stormed" even in terms of doctrine, especially in terms of promotion and social awareness of the benefit resulting in following the access to such mechanisms that allow the so-called fresh start. Why this slow evolution in the application of the treatment of over-indebtedness of simple individuals? Perhaps the enactment of this special law does not meet expectations and is inadequate to the demands of a developed society, perhaps we are not prepared at the cultural level to assimilate it and we are dependent on the stigma of insolvency deeply rooted in our guide of values, perhaps the successive postponement of this normative act triggered a kind of uncertainty, the insolvency procedure becoming a tricky, difficult "realm", difficult to access and especially to navigate, with a much too long time horizon that the debtor must assume in order to improving its economic situation and especially in order to achieve the ultimate goal, namely the discharge of debts and the benefit of a fresh start in society. Beyond the limits of strictly legal multidisciplinarity and the true analysis of legislation intended strictly for the over-indebted and bona fide consumer, insolvency seen from a psychological, social perspective, from the perspective of people who go through such an experience, whether they are debtors individuals, whether they are administrators of debtors legal entities, whether they are employees, raises many questions. What would be the psychological impact on them and what would be the effects of the financial and economic crisis on human behavior? How do the effects of a gradually unbalanced economy affect society and those who have directly experienced the consequences, those who have lost their jobs? How is a person who has come into contact with the insolvency procedure seen and what will be their status in society? Is the current law a failure? What would be the foundations of an "ideal" model in regulating the insolvency of simple individuals? Starting from the premise that the insolvency of the individual is a very delicate subject, with certain nuances and depths of interpretation, we proposed that our research reach an interdisciplinary area, without limiting ourselves to the classic research of analysis-commentary of the legislation of insolvency of the natural person. To achieve this goal, we set ourselves the goal of cutting this research topic in a cascade, starting from the intrinsic and extrinsic springs that can cause an individual to consume irresponsibly, from the idea of changing consumer behavior relative to periods of economic crisis, the need to increase social responsibility and consumer protection, as real social security programs, to identify mechanisms to prevent and treat over-indebtedness, the psychological impact of accessing them, but also to identify solutions for legislative reform, through the creation of a common legislative corpus achieved through the absorption of Law no. 151/2015 by the current Insolvency Code - Law no. 85/2014, an idea already outlined in many countries such as Singapore, Austria, but also India and the United Arab Emirates, which we approached as reference systems in our research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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