37From that perspective, the fact that a debtor is responsible for a number of delays in making payment for successive deliveries of goods or provision of services under a single contract cannot have the effect of reducing, to a single fixed sum, the fixed minimum sum payable by way of compensation for the recovery costs in respect of each late payment. Such a reduction would, first of all, effectively deprive Article 6 of Directive 2011/7 of any practical effect, the objective of that directive being, as has been pointed out in the preceding paragraph, not only to discourage late payment but also for those sums to serve as compensation ‘for the creditor’s own recovery costs’, costs which tend to rise in proportion to the number of payments and amounts which the debtor fails to pay on time. That reduction would moreover be equivalent to granting the debtor a derogation from the entitlement to the fixed sum referred to in Article 6(1) of that directive, without that derogation being justified by any ‘objective reason’ within the meaning of point (c) of the second subparagraph of Article 7(1) of that directive. Lastly, the reduction at issue would effectively exempt the debtor from part of the financial burden arising from the debtor’s obligation to pay, in respect of each payment not paid on time, the fixed sum of EUR 40 provided for in Article 6(1) (see, to that effect, judgment of 20 October 2022, BFF Finance Iberia, C‑585/20, EU:C:2022:806, paragraph 37).
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