Study on Judicial Auctions Management in the EU (based on the the data collected through the "Questionnaire on the implementation of the E-Justice portal and on the Judicial Auctions management in Member States

This study is based on the analysis of the data collected by the "Questionnaire on the implementation of the E-Justice portal and on the Judicial Auctions management in Member States" which was distributed through the Member States (MSs) participating to the Working Party on e-Law (e-Justice) - Expert group on judicial auctions. The questionnaire aim is to assess the contents provided by the e-Justice Portal on judicial auctions and gathering information on the concrete functioning of judicial auctions in the EU Member States. A Judicial Auction is a proceeding through which a Judge or his or her delegate realises a debtor's assets in a public auction with the purpose of raising the sum of money needed to satisfy a creditor's claim. The Judicial Auction is normally preceded by a seizure that is the act through which the creditor identifies the assets suitable to satisfy the claim. Immovable and movable property can be seized, as well as credits which the debtor holds vis-à-vis a third party. In this case, however, the enforcement proceedings do not terminate with the sale but with the allocation of the debtor's credit to his or her creditor. There are different types of Auctions in the EU Member States. A Judicial Auction is usually directed by a Judge, who can assign the sales operation to a third party (an independent professional or a company specifically authorised to perform this task), and is preceded by appropriate advertisements. For the purpose of this study, a judicial auction is defined as a method that creditors use to enforce a judgment. When a plaintiff wins a judgment against a defendant in civil court, and the defendant does not pay the judgment, the creditor can force the sale of the defendant's property until the judgment is satisfied. The creditor forces the sale by asking the court for an execution on property, which is a seizure of property by the court for the purpose of selling the property. The objectives of the Judicial Auction Project that brought to the collection of information through a questionnaire, as outlined in 8278/15 and 6194/16 and clarified during the expert meetings held on 19 October 2015 and 29 February 2016, are the following: a) to update the relevant pages of the e-justice Portal; b) to investigate the degree of convergence among the different legislations in order to encourage a possible establishment of national registers/databases of the properties up to auctions; c) in the future, to develop effective cross-border auctions; The questionnaire and this report focus on: a) the different stages of the enforcement procedure in all the MS; b) the MSs' opinions on the implementation of the portal's information on auctions; c) useful tools for translation of web-pages and registers of assets that can support cross-border auctions. The structure of this document follows the organization of the questionnaire. The content is organized in three main sections (Section I, consisting of 10 Parts; Section II consisting of 4 Parts; Section 3 consisting of 12 Parts). The first section concerns the e-Justice Portal. Part I of the first section addresses the opinion of each Member State on the specific features of the e-Justice Portal in its present form, with a particular focus on the pages dealing with enforcement and sale by auction. It has been in particular investigated whether the information contained in the portal is felt to be comprehensive and appropriate or instead it contains omissions and errors, and whether it is such as to enable EU citizens to take part in forced sales. Starting from Part II of the first section, the report focuses on the rules governing enforcement procedures, in order to determine the degree of convergence between the various legal systems. Moreover, it seek to identify, in the first instance, the kind of specific information that will enable EU citizens to obtain access independently to forced sales, without needing to use the services of professionals specialized in this area. Then, the section "Information on the performance of the enforcement procedures" shed light on whether Member States currently provide creditors with information that can help them deciding whether to initiate an enforcement procedure. The second section of the report provides a general overview of the specific features of registers of assets. It also addresses the question if it would be worth creating a network of the registers of assets of all the Member States. In particular, it has been addressed the opinion of Member States on the specific features of the e-Justice Portal related to the pages dealing with enforcement and sale by auction. Moreover, the second section focuses on the creditor's intervention in the enforcement procedure clarifying whether a creditor can intervene in an enforcement procedure initiated by another creditor against the same debtor in the MSs analyzed. Finally, the third section of the report addresses the issue of which information and system's support are necessary in order to enable a citizen of one Member State to take part in a public auction in another Member State. In particular, it has been analyzed which suitable technological tools are available in MS and which could be developed. Moreover, it has been investigated how the online sale of the assets are promoted and where the use of digital signature and party electronic identification is available. Given the diffusion of online judicial sales in a number of Member States, the report helps to clarify whether the time is ripe for encouraging the use of information and communication technology for supporting cross-border judicial sales. Online judicial sales could help to reduce costs and, more generally, help overcome the barriers to access to judicial auctions; seized assets could ultimately be sold more quickly and at higher prices, thereby ensuring better satisfaction of creditors.