The House plenum on Thursday accepted four referrals made by the president, and rejected one, relating to laws passed previously concerning property foreclosures and the rights of debtors.

The plenary was voting on the five items – a series of laws passed by parliament on April 6, which President Nikos Christodoulides later vetoed, referring them back to the legislature with recommendations for changes.

The president had cited various objections – such as non-compliance with the constitution, legal ambiguity, and possible adverse impacts on the economy and the banking sector.

In remarks on the House floor, opposition MPs dismissed these as performative – namely that the government doesn’t really have legal objections but that it is simply siding with the banks, to the detriment of distressed borrowers at risk of losing their primary residence.

Nevertheless, to prevent a long drawn-out dispute in the courts if they rejected the president’s referrals, the majority of lawmakers accepted them.

Earlier in the day, MPs also railed against the attorney-general’s office, which had codified the president’s objections.

They accused the AG’s office of effectively “ruling the country”.

Of the five bills which the president refused to sign off on, referring them back to parliament, the plenum accepted four of the referrals.

These were: bankruptcy laws which parliament had amended in April; credit contracts for consumers relating to residential immovable property; laws relating to the liberalisation of the interest rate; and the Courts of Justice Law.

On the fifth item – the Immovable Property (Transfer and Mortgage) Law – MPs stuck to their guns, rejecting the president’s referral. In other words, they insisted on the law they had earlier amended.

The Immovable Property Law governs the transfer of title, registration, and the procedures for foreclosure on mortgaged property, including recent 2025 amendments addressing “trapped buyers”.

The changes introduced in April – many of them now undone by the president’s referrals – included the appointing of judges for financial disputes, extending deadlines, scrapping the demand for additional collateral, the right to appeal the sale of property in cases of disputed debt or unfair loan clauses, and the cancellation of remaining debt when the house is sold for less than the mortgage.

They also provided for a cap on the interest rate, limiting the liability of guarantors to the initial loan, setting a minimum sale price of 50 per cent of the property’s value in auctions, suspending the sale of residences up to €350,000 until August, and obliging the creditor to first take measures against the debtor before turning to the guarantors.