Judicial protection in cross-border credits in the European Union: attachment order of bank accounts proposal

Abstract

The takings of measures to improve and simplify the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial cases have been taken to fulfil the aim of establishing a genuine European area of justice. In this way the European Union has adopted some protective measures to improve solutions to the problems of cross-borders debt-recovery. One of them, called as «European attachment of bank accounts», tries to avoid that debtors are able to move their monies out of accounts known to their creditors into other accounts in the same or another Member State, and permit creditors to be able to block these movements of monies through provisional remedies, which secure the future enforcement of a monetary claim by freezing bank accounts. The current legislation does not ensure that such remedies are recognized and enforced throughout the European Union. A possible solution to the problems of debt-recovery outlined above would be to create a European system for the attachment of bank accounts which allows a creditor, in certain circumstances, to secure the payment of a sum of money due to him by preventing the removal or transfer of funds held to the credit of his debtor in one or several bank accounts within the territory of the European Union. Taking into account the Commission’s «Green Paper on improving the efficiency of the enforcement of judgments in the European Union: the attachment of bank accounts» (2006) that puts forward a pre-legislative proposal for the attachment of bank accounts to prevent the removal of funds held to the creditors claim from his debtor’s bank account while the creditor is awaiting the recognition of his enforceable judgment or title. We analyse the scope of the problems of crossborder debt recovery and the likely effectiveness of this new European instrument.