Despite years of consistent activities carried out by the European Commission and by the Member States to improve the integration of Member States into a single e-Justice area, concrete actions for fostering the cross-border cooperation in the judicial auction area – especially in the asset sales process – are still missing.
The activities carried out by the Expert Group on Judicial Auctions (an expert group setup at the Council of the European Union on the judicial auction topic) within the e-Justice Action Plan 2014-2018 highlighted that the cooperation among Member States, in the asset sales process in judicial enforcement procedures, is addressed at EU level by simple informative pages in the e-Justice portal. The information provided is related to a basic terminology used in auctions, a list of the Member States currently providing a national on-line judicial auctions system, the kind of auctions handled and links to the national auction web portals (in any). To date, information for less than the half of the Member States is published in the European e-Justice Portal.
The empirical analysis outlined that:
Most portals are only in local language
National portals are differently indexed by the web search engines, i.e., they usually don’t appear among the first items of a search results page in Google or other engines
Third parties’ private portals might have information that is not always updated or correct, or lacking any sort of verification or certification from the official information owners
National portals neither provide uniform look and feel, nor uniform search criteria
All national systems have a national scope: it is not possible for a user to search for transnational sales, which would be useful for both local businesses seeking expansion and investors looking for branches of companies on sale.
In 2020, an analysis of the status quo showed the judicial auctions sector is fragmented at national level, with a negative impact on the competition among potential buyers at EU level, on the sales values and on the time to conclude sales. Thus, the following needs have been identified as key factors for overcoming the detected weaknesses of the sector:
Possibility for citizens and companies to easily access, without intermediaries, information on goods to be sold in judicial auctions taking place in one or more Member States, through a one-stop-shop
Possibility to compare the goods from different countries, to evaluate the most suitable for the specific interest of a single user
Presence of a pan-European network interconnecting Member States judicial auctions national systems, enabling users in accessing only certified and reliable information.
Considering the above, the ‘LEILA – towards a muLtilingual European platform for judIciaL Auctions’ (LEILA) Project was conceived in 2020 with the aim to reflect on these needs and fill the gaps in the cross-border cooperation in judicial auctions domain by providing a multilingual pilot platform where information about goods to be sold in judicial auctions across EU is reported together with related regulations.
To facilitating complex searches, thus extending single national boundaries and enabling users to compare the search results in a selected language, information fields are to be standardized and translated in all the EU official languages, while automatic translation system is applied only to free text. This functionality will be complemented by a simple and intuitive graphical user interface.
The pilot platform is to be integrated with the national providers’ case management systems of Italy, Latvia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Portugal, France, and Lithuania, to retrieve auctions’ official and up-to-date data in a completely automated way. The possibility for manual upload and update of information where such (an) information system(s) on national level does not yet exist shall be further developed to secure the EU-wide adoption of the platform.
To facilitate these activities, LEILA takes over the e-CODEX infrastructure being the EU content agnostic e-Delivery infrastructure that supports cross-border e-Justice services. While e-CODEX operates at international level, on national level the respective national systems are in play, and they reflect the national specifics of both the respective jurisdiction and the differences across the Member States (on a case-by-case basis).
The project currently initiated its first steps towards (1) mapping project stakeholders to secure their engagement in project activities and (2) data gathering of stakeholders’ requirements and best practices. The results are expected to be made publicly soon with a series of stakeholder discusses to follow.
The pilot platform is to be expected in 2023. As of today, LEILA calls upon other Member States’ competent authorities to join the piloting process and/or to take part in the development for its functional and technical requirements.
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While LEILA does its job, it is also interesting to check the list of EU countries in which the online judicial auction is already in place (only 11 out of 28!). It is no surprise Bulgaria is not on this list despite the advancement of the law in this regard since 2017. Why is that?
According to Article 501a, Para 5 of the Bulgarian Civil Procedure Code (Bulgarian only), an electronic auction is conducted via a uniform online platform for electronic auctions maintained by the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice. The terms and conditions for the use and functioning of the platform are to be established by means of an ordinance issued by the Minister of Justice (Article 501a, Para 6 of the Bulgarian Civil Procedure Code). However, this platform is currently not operational and is still under development. Moreover, the ordinance under Article 501a, Para 6 of the Bulgarian Civil Procedure Code is yet to be adopted and therefore the main conditions and requirements relating to specificities on data entry, management and availability are not established.
As most of the Bulgarian information systems these days, the national registry of liens is developed as part of an EU-funded project, the grant agreement of which has been signed back in April 2017. Encountering significant delays in launching the public procurement procedures under the project, the national uniform online platform for electronic auctions is currently being developed under a public procurement contract awarded by the Ministry of Justice (Bulgarian only). The platform is envisaged as module to a national registry of liens (also being developed under the same public contract).
The contract was awarded on 11 June 2020 with a term for implementation of 6 (six) months. However, there is no publicly available information on whether the contract has been completed in due time or its duration has been extended. The platform is not available online and the specifics on the information to be provided by the platform are not currently publicly available.
May be it is not too late for Bulgaria to join the LEILA call for action?
The author is a member of the LIBRe Foundation Team working on the LEILA Project. The content of this article represents the views of the author and is their sole responsibility. Neither the European Commission nor the LEILA Consortium accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.
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