Amendments of the Enforcement Act

The procedure of the amendments of the Enforcement Act continued for more than 6 months and on 15 July 2014 the Croatian Parliament adopted the Act on Amendments of the Enforcement Act.

We are bringing you some the most important amendments:

• introduction of the public electronic auction for sale of property and movables which will be implemented and maintained by the Financial Agency ( “FINA”);
• if the debtor lives on property which is being enforced, the debtor is given the option to propose different asset which can be enforced. If the property which the debtor lives on, is nevertheless sold in the enforcement proceedings, the debtor may continue to live as a tenant on such property for one year following the day the decision on hand-over of property is rendered;
• the price limits for the sale of property in the enforcement proceedings are increased – on the first auction the property cannot be sold for less than 4/5 of the appraised value and on the second auction it cannot be sold for less than 3/5 of the appraised value;
• the legal institute where the debtor was invited by the court to give statement about his assets (Croatian “prokazne popis imovine” and “prokazne izjava”) is abandoned;
• new grounds to postpone the enforcement proceedings are introduced;
• the deadlines for enforcement proceedings over the properties are now explicitly stated - if the enforcement request is founded, the court must issue its decision within 15 days period and further actions (appraisal and sale) have to be done in 30 days period;
• change of the enforcement creditors without the debtor’s consent in case the claim has been transferred to a new creditor is now possible (until now, in such scenario, the enforcement proceedings would have been cancelled and the new creditor had to start over);
• the seized money in bank accounts shall be transferred to creditors by FINA within 60 days (instead of 30 days which was the case so far).

These Amendments entered into force on 01 September 2014, however the provisions on public electronic auction and sale by FINA shall be applicable as of 01 January 2015.