The last amendment to the Claim Enforcement and Security Act – what does it bring?
In accordance with the Regulation 1215/2012/EU, the Act Amending the Claim Enforcement and Security Act (Zakon o spremembah in dopolnitvah Zakona o izvršbi in zavarovanju; ZIZ-L) provides, inter alia, ex-lege recognition of judgments issued in other Member States without having to bring special proceedings, i.e. the exequatur, which is therefore no longer a condition for filing an application for enforcement. (This, however, does not imply that it will not be possible to oppose the recognition or enforcement of the foreign judgment.) In accordance with the proposal, it will be possible to apply for an order that there are no grounds for refusal of the foreign judgment recognition, making it possible in practice to file an application for recognition of the foreign judgment without any special procedure, making the judgment enforceable without declaration of enforceability, that is in accordance with the rules governing the procedure for refusal of the enforcement in the enforcement proceedings. The procedure will thus allow (i) to file an application for refusal of recognition, (ii) to file an application for decision that there are no grounds for refusal of recognition, or (iii) file an application for refusal of enforcement.
In compliance with the provisions of the Regulation 655/2014/EU, ZIZ-L will facilitate cross-border debt recovery by introducing the procedure, under which European Account Preservation Order will be issued. It is a cross-border case if, for example, application to issue an account preservation order is filed before the Slovenian court and debtor’s bank account, which is the subject of the order, is in another Member State. ZIZ-L will regulate a kind of interim injunction for freezing the funds preventing the transfer or withdrawal of funds on the debtor’s bank account in another Member State if there is a risk the subsequent enforcement is likely to be jeopardised. These proceedings will allow the creditor to obtain from the court, by filing an application on standardised form, the preservation order, on the basis of which the funds on debtor’s bank account in any other Member State will be blocked.
By now, both regulations would already have to be taken into consideration by the courts; however, it will only be possible to comply with the provisions thereof after they are transposed in the national law, because until now those provisions could not be implemented in their entirety.
