INITIATIVES AT THE EU

In 2021, the European Commission submitted a revision proposal. It states that “Personal data, such as personal data found on social media platforms or health data, including cancer data, should not be used when conducting a creditworthiness assessment” (Paragraph 47). 

Based on this text, negotiators from the Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement in December 2022 which includes a measure that protects cancer survivors applying for credit for which insurance is required, whereby they have the “right to be forgotten” after a relevant period of time so their former illness does affect the insurance rates (art. 14).

MEP Kateřina Konečná (The Left, CZ) was instrumental in getting the right to be forgotten included in the provisional text. She declared: “In this time of economic crisis, we have prepared legislation that will really protect consumers in the field of consumer credit. For the first time in history, we managed to enforce the guarantee of the right to be forgotten for cancer patients in EU legislation.”

The text was approved by the European Parliament on 12 September 2023. It states: 

(41a) Because of their medical history, many cancer survivors in long-term remission often experience an unfair treatment in accessing to financial services. They often face prohibitively high premiums, although they have been cured for many years, even decades. For the purpose of giving consumers who survived cancer equal access to insurance related to credit agreements, Member States should require that the insurance policies are not based on health data of consumers after a relevant period of time following the end of the consumer’s medical treatment. Such period of time determined by the Member States may not exceed a period of 15 years counting from the end of the medical treatment of the consumer.

and 

(47) The assessment of creditworthiness should be based on information on the financial and economic situation, (…) That information (…) should not include special categories of personal data referred to in Article 9(1) of Regulation (EU)
2016/679, such as health data including cancer data, nor information obtained from social networks.

The Consumer Credit Directive entered into force on 19 November 2023. Member States will then have two years to transpose it into national legislation in the way they see fit, and one additional year to implement it. 

While this is a step in the right direction in protecting cancer survivors from financial discrimination, this remains insufficient. While it is a legislative act, a Directive leaves it up to the individual countries to devise their own laws on how to reach the goal identified at the EU level. A Regulation would better enshrine the illegal nature of discrimination against cancer survivors as it would immediately become law across the EU in a harmonised way.