Case study on the functioning of enforcement proceedings relating to judicial decisions in Member States – 2015. The document was prepared for the European Commission’s Directorate General Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality by Matrix Insight Ltd (Optimity Matrix) in association with Tipik.
The purpose of this study was to collect data on the functioning of the EU Member
States’ national judicial systems when enforcing judicial decisions in civil and
commercial matters. Data on the length of enforcement proceedings is difficult to
collect as Member States seldom collect this information.
Following a methodology where two scenarios were used, this research found a
difference between Member States in terms of the length of enforcement proceedings;
the start of the enforcing proceeding and the freezing of the defendant’s bank account
vary from 2 to 196 days between Member States. The time between the freezing of
the bank account and the recovery of the assets can vary from 5 to 533 days.
However, these data must be taken with caution due to (i) the small sample of cases
available, (ii) the differences in the judicial systems of the Member States.
Symposium