UIHJ-EuroDanube meeting in Tallinn (Estonia) on 3 March 2011

Present (in alphabetical order):

Bulgaria: Elitsa Hristova-Tsebova, Aneliya Glavanova

Czech Republic: Juraj Podkonický

Estonia: Janek Pool, Elin Villipus, Marti Lääne, Martin Lääne, Oksana Kutsmei

Hungary: Miklos Krejniker, Gyula Kovacs    

Latvia: Guna Berlande, Mara Grenina    

Lithuania: Dovile Satkauskiene, Jurate Baksyte-Lozorkevicie    

FYRO-Macedonia: Antonio Kostanov, Savetka Georgieva    

UIHJ: Leo Netten, Mathieu Chardon

UIHJ-EuroDanube: Juraj Podkonický, Otakar Svoboda

Absent: Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia (no contact).

 

Juraj Podkonicky opens the meeting. With warm welcome he remarked that the meeting celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Estonian Chamber. He also pointed out the perfect organization of the meeting by the Estonian chamber and especially Elin Villipus, Chief of organizing committee and thanked for the invitation to beautiful Estonian Capital Tallinn.

 

As no UIHJ-EuroDanube member proposed any concrete problem to be discussed at the conference, Mr Podkonický opened a free discussion. "Let´s talk about what actual problems the member states are dealing and fighting with. Let´s exchange opinions and solutions," he said. And then he asked the President of UIHJ, Leo Netten for the opening speech. Leo Netten saluted all the delegations and mainly the organizers and hosts, the Estonian Chamber. Such meeting, with open discussion about problems and with opinions exchange should be organized once a year at least, he said. The UIHJ is in close contact with UIHJ-EuroDanube. An important issue which could be discussed is tariff rates and remunerations of judicial officers. The other themes, he stated, should be proposed by the delegations themselves.

 

Mr Podkonický thanked Mr Netten and asked the delegations for a short presentation of the situations in their countries.

 

 

Dovile Satkauskiene, for the National Chamber, mentioned that the chamber was established just 8 years ago and the actual problem is the one stated by Leo Netten. The new ministry of justice is enforcing the reduction of tariff rates. “We negotiated with him several times”, she said, “but without any satisfactory result to this day”. Despite this, she hopes the tariffs will remain; otherwise this could be a great problem.

 

Guna Berlande and Mara Grenina, for the Latvian Chamber, informed the participants about their three main targets: tariffs, deposit accounts and VAT.

Tariffs: in Latvia within the last three years, the tariffs were approached by the ministry of justice: how the amount of compensation relates to the proceeding of the judicial officers´ work, if they are not over paid, etc. The situation could be very complicated but the fact that every step must be agreed by the Chamber of judicial officers is relatively stable.

Deposit accounts: The Chamber must open deposit accounts at the Central Bank only. This causes that interests go to the state itself. This, Leo Netten said, is not allowed according to Article 36 of the CEPEJ Guidelines (Guidelines for a better implementation of Recommendation Rec (2003)17 of 9 September 2003 of the Council of Europe on enforcement). This could be treated as an infraction of the above article. Mr Netten recommended discussing this with the ministry.

VAT: In Latvia from every auction of immovable and movables the VAT amounts to 20%. This causes a lot of complications including the reducing of amount of recovering for the creditor. Is the situation similar in other UIHJ-EuroDanube countries, they asked?

Mr Podkonický underwrote he will ask all the members to inform about the situation in their country.

 

Elitsa Hristova, for the Chamber, pointed out that the main problems are the fees the judicial officers must pay for every enquiry about the debtor´s current situation. This not only causes the raising of price but also the reducing of the effectiveness.

Instead of adopting measures for improving fast and efficient enforcement, which are even more important for the creditors in times of economic crisis, the Ministry of Justice proposed and imposed at the National Assembly an amendment in the Law on Private Enforcement Agents and in the Civil Procedure Code, which drastically delays enforcement requesting advance payment of a state fee by the creditor for each separate reference, lien or distraint. There is not a logic and grounded answer to the question why such serious defeat is inflicted on the judicial enforcement in Bulgaria.

The new amendment, apart from creating inequality both between private and public enforcement agents (the latter, as part of the district courts, shall not pay to other state authorities any charge), and between creditors and debtors of private and public enforcement agents, results in extreme delay of private enforcement agents' work.

Mr Podkonický suggested contacting the President of Slovakian Chamber, Peter Molnár, who solved the problem a few years ago in his country. An international conference will by organized relating to this problem by the Slovakian Chamber on 31 March in Bratislava.

As Elitsa Hristova said, the situation on the other way seems to be better now, as the discussions with the Ministry of Justice enlarged recently.

(Former Yugoslavian Republic of) Macedonia

The President of the Chamber, Antonio Kostanov, named the situation in FYRO-Macedonia as pure crisis for judicial officers. The cut-down of the tariffs within the last months amount approximately to 30% in general (For amounts under EUR 300 even 80%). This situation provokes the pre-decision of judicial officers in the country to stop their activities in general during next two-three month if the situation would not get better. At the same time the tariffs were reduced for the lawyers, notaries and mediators, too, by approximately 20 to 30%. On top of this, the ministry of justice is ready to suppress the Numerus clausus which the chamber must consider as a direct hit to the free profession of judicial officers. Because of this the 5th anniversary of the establishment of this profession in FYRO-Macedonia could by the last one at the same date. Therefore Mr Kostanov asked the UIHJ and UIHJ-EuroDanube for urgent help. Leo Netten considers the situation in the country as a very complicated one. The UIHJ tries to help and solve problems. He will be present in FYRO-Macedonia and is ready to talk to the responsible state authorities there. Mr Kostanov asked the member states of UIHJ-EuroDanube for help and active cooperation in this "fight with the state" in his country.

 

Miklos Krejniker, President of the national chamber said in his presentation that since the last UIHJ-EuroDanube meeting, there have been some amendments to the Hungarian enforcement act, all of which are related to the inception of a judicial officer's service.

 

Janek Pool, Chairman of the Board of Assembly of Judicial officers, said he was going to inform about the situation in Estonia during the tomorrow´s international conference of the Estonian chamber. The fact is that Estonia is in election time means it will be necessary to renew or establish new contact and discuss the problems with voted ministry - members of government and parliament.

Mr Podkonicky informed shortly about the situation in the Czech Republic. Currently, the Chamber prepares in cooperation with the Ministry of justice the new Code of judicial proceeding. This should among others cancel the so-called paralleling in executions and simplify some enforcement procedures (e.g. sale of business company share or sale of cooperative flats). Also auctions sales of movables and immovable should also be simplified (flats, houses, lots) and make the whole process of enforcement quicker and more effective. In the middle of February the Chamber organized a discussion on these topics with judges, judicial officers and ministry of justice representatives. The end of discussion is expected in November 2011 and re-enactment up to the end of the year.

 

The discussion in Tallinn was concluded by Leo Netten. Then Juraj Podkonický thanked the Estonian organizers of the conference for the perfect work and for making the conference in Tallinn possible. He informed he will ask all UIHJ-EuroDanube member states for a report about the situation in their countries because 4 of 11 members were not present in Tallinn.

 

The next UIHJ-EuroDanube meeting will be held on October 2011 (exact date to be confirmed) in Bucharest (Romania) on occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Chamber´s foundation.

 

For a full report of this UIHJ-EuroDanube session, go to: www.eurodanube.eu