Payment arrears
The share of the population with payment arrears has been increasing between 2008 and 2010 and over a quarter of the population have to manage arrears by 2012. The most dramatic change is the increase by half in 2009 which is reflects that at the onset of the crisis people first started to experience serious problems - especially with mortgage repayments. And no effective measures have been taken since 2009 in order to ease the situation. The two main areas of arrears are mortgage loan repayments and utilities bills. Moreover, often there is a compound effect both in time and in kind (loans and utilities). The share of the population facing financial difficulties of this sort is nearly two and a half times the EU average while it is not outstanding in the region.