The European Commission today proposed new rules
on recovery of debts from bank accounts anywhere in the EU27. EU companies lose
an estimated 2.6% of turnover every year to unrecovered debts - - valued at
about €600m, according to the Commission. About 60% of cross-border debt remains
unrecovered every year, it added.
The Commission cited a
a small Italian cheese company which supplies mozzarella to a frozen pizza maker
in France. After the French company falls behind on its payments, the Italian
firm stops the shipments, but it’s stuck with thousands of euros of unpaid
bills. How will the Italian company recover the debt? Today there is no easy
answer.
The Commission says
fraudsters can easily move money from one member state to another, stashing
funds in several accounts in multiple countries. Citizens also suffer
when goods bought online are never delivered or an absent
parent fails to pay maintenance from abroad. At the moment, it’s up to
national law to require a bank to pay the money from a client’s bank account to
a creditor. The current situation in the 27 member states is legally
complicated, time consuming and expensive.
Around 1m small
businesses face problems with cross-border debts and up to €600m
a year in debt is unnecessarily written off because businesses find it too
daunting to pursue expensive, confusing lawsuits in foreign countries. The European Commission today proposes a new
Europe-wide preservation order to ease the recovery of cross-border debts for
both citizens and businesses.
“I want to make recovering cross-border debts as easy as
recovering debts domestically,"said EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding.
"Companies lose around 2.6% of their turnover a year to bad
debts. This is a weakness of our single market which we must remedy swiftly and
energetically! Businesses need a simple solution – an account preservation order
effective Europe-wide – so that the money stays where it is until a court has
taken a decision on the repayment of the funds. In these difficult economic
times, companies need quick answers. Every euro counts, especially for small
businesses.”
Today's legislative initiative aims to facilitate these cross-border claims and
gives creditors more certainty about recovering their debt, thereby increasing
confidence in trading within the EU’s single market. It is part of the
Commission's “justice for growth” agenda, which seeks to harness the
potential of the EU's common area of justice for trade and growth.
Background
The
Commission says the regulation would establish a new European Account
Preservation Order that would allow creditors to preserve the amount owed in a
debtor's bank account. This order can be of crucial importance in debt recovery
proceedings because it would prevent debtors from removing or dissipating their
assets during the time it takes to obtain and enforce a judgment on the merits.
This will raise the prospects of successfully recovering cross-border debt.
The new European order will allow creditors to preserve funds in
bank accounts under the same conditions in all member states of the EU.
Importantly, there will be no change to the national systems for preserving
funds. The Commission is simply adding a European procedure that creditors can
chose to use to recover claims abroad in other EU countries. The new procedure
is an interim protection procedure. To actually get
hold of the money, the creditor will have to obtain a final judgment on the case
in accordance with national law or by using one of the simplified European
procedures, such as the European Small Claims Procedure.
The European Account Preservation Order will be available to the
creditor as an alternative to instruments existing under national law. It will
be of a protective nature, meaning it will only block the debtor's account but
not allow money to be paid out to the creditor. The instrument will only apply
to cross-border cases. The European Account Preservation Order will be issued in
an ex parte
procedure. This means that it would be issued without the debtor knowing about
it, thus allowing for a “surprise effect”.The instrument provides common rules relating
to jurisdiction, conditions and procedure for issuing an order; a disclosure
order relating to bank accounts; how it should be enforced by national courts
and authorities; and remedies for the debtor and other elements of defendant
protection.
The
proposed European Account Preservation Order Regulation will now pass to the
European Parliament and the Council of the EU for adoption under the ordinary
legislative procedure and by qualified majority.
According to recent Eurobarometer surveys, consumers are still reluctant to shop
cross-border. Only 7% of European consumers buy online from another member state
and 14% of web shoppers ran into problems with the transaction.