Judgment_paragraph 37 · VB and Others v BNP Paribas Personal Finance SA and AV and Others v BNP Paribas Personal Finance SA and Procureur de la République (C-776/19, C-777/19, C-778/19, C-779/19, C-780/19, C-781/19, C-782/19)

37In the third place, it is apparent from case-law that a contractual term held to be unfair must be regarded, in principle, as never having existed, so that it cannot have any effect on the consumer. The Court has concluded that the determination by a court that such a term is unfair must, in principle, have the consequence of restoring the consumer to the legal and factual situation that he or she would have been in had that term not existed, with the result that the obligation for the national court to exclude an unfair contract term imposing the payment of amounts that prove not to be due entails, in principle, a corresponding restitutory effect in respect of those same amounts (see, to that effect, judgments of 21 December 2016, Gutiérrez Naranjo and Others, C‑154/15, C‑307/15 and C‑308/15, EU:C:2016:980, paragraphs 61 and 62, and of 9 July 2020, Raiffeisen Bank and BRD Groupe Société Générale, C‑698/18 and C‑699/18, EU:C:2020:537, paragraph 54).