Gabriela de Ávila Machado
Lawyer at Marcos Martins Advogados
Through Message No. 371, published on July 1, 2020, the President of the Republic informed the Federal Senate of his full veto of Bill No. 675 of 2020.
The purpose of the bill was to retroactively suspend and prevent “new registrations in the registers of analysis and information companies for credit decisions while the public calamity resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic is in force” and was considered by the President to be unconstitutional and contrary to the public interest (§ 1 of art. 66 of the Constitution).
The decision came after a statement from the Ministries of Justice and Public Security, the Economy and the Federal Attorney General’s Office, to the effect that the rule would generate “legal insecurity by making it possible to review acts and legal relationships that have already been consolidated in a potential offense against the constitutional guarantee of the perfect legal act” and would go against the public interest “given the measure’s potential to harm the functioning of the credit market and the efficiency of registration systems, since (. …) providers tend to adopt more conservative behavior that will be reflected in deviations in the market, generating high interest rates and supply restrictions, which could violate the constitutional principle of free enterprise (…).
Finally, the institutions also warned that providing payment coercion instruments for a substantially long period would give excessive protection to the debtor to the detriment of the creditor.
