4th Hungarian Training Seminar on European Cross-Border Enforcement of Claims

The "Issues relating to cross-border enforcement of claims" programme is financed by the European Union and implemented by the Ministry of Justice of Hungary, the National Chamber of Judicial Officers of Hungary and the National Chamber of Notaries of Hungary, in partnership with the UIHJ. This fourth and final seminar focused on the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a European order for seizure of bank accounts, to facilitate cross-border debt recovery in civil and commercial matters

The seminar was held in the prestigious premises of the National Chamber of Judicial Officers of Hungary in Budapest, which includes a real theatre, a place well suited for seminars and trainings.

Seventy participants, judicial officers and notaries from Hungary and thirteen other European countries (Scotland, France, Greece, Latvia, Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden and others) met for two days of work and friendly and productive exchanges. The UIHJ was represented by two of its consultants: Patrick Gielen, judicial officer in Brussels (Belgium) and Guillaume Payan, lecturer at the University of Toulon (France). The working languages were English, French and Hungarian.

The first speaker, Dr Habil Viktória Harsági, Head of Department of Civil Procedure, Faculty of Law Pázmány Péter Catholic University, made a general presentation of the proposed regulation based on a survey conducted in Eastern European countries members of the European Union, giving new perspectives on the rules in these European countries.

The second speaker, Edit Juhász, Head of Department, Ministry of Justice of Hungary, analysed the first chapter of this proposed regulation focusing particularly on the conditions that should be met in order to obtain this European order of seizure.

Patrick Gielen focused on the enforceability and enforcement of the European order with particular emphasis on the importance of service of this order from European banks and the obligation that rests from this Regulation proposal for banks to have to disclose information relating to bank accounts of debtors.

To close the first day, Guillaume Payan considered transparency of assets of debtors with emphasis on the disparities between the different Member States of the EU and particularly on EU actions in this field.

During the second day, Konrad Zbrojewski, Polish judge, presented the possibilities of remedies available to the parties under this proposal. He shared his knowledge on recent developments in this proposed regulation as a member of the expert group responsible for its drafting. He said that this text has been discussed in recent weeks and that those which will lead to its adoption will probably remain difficult.

To conclude this series of four seminars which were held during the year 2013, Tamás Balogh, legal adviser to the Ministry of Justice of Hungary presented a masterful summary of European civil procedure briefly reviewing all regulations covered during these four trainings, a very appropriate way of concluding this conference.

Participants had the opportunity to interact with the speakers and ask practical questions related to their activities. They were able to get answers benefiting from the experience of stakeholders but also judicial officers and notaries from the different countries represented.

At the end of the seminar, a quiz was given to the participants to test their new knowledge.