Cross-Border Attachment of Bank Accounts (Regulation)
The Proposal provides for an introduction of a European Account Preservation Order. Such order is to be issued if the existence of a debt claim is made credible. For the enforcement of a decision, Member States must appoint enforcement authorities which must approve the order without any further examination and preserve the debtor’s bank account. If the creditor does not know the debtors’ bank accounts, banks are obliged to disclose them or authorities are entitled to search for them in national registers. Debtors are not being notified until after the preservation of their accounts.
cepPolicyBrief
Although it is appropriate to facilitate the cross-border attachment of bank accounts there are several substantial concerns against singe provisions of the Proposal. In particular, should the procedure not be introduced until high levels of the rule of law would have to prevail in all Member States. Otherwise the procedure might be abused. Moreover, the provisions on bank account data disclosure through the disclosure duty of banks or investigations by authorities lie outside EU competencies and are problematic in terms of data protection law.
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