Directive 2013/11/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of May 21, 2013, on alternative dispute resolution for consumer disputes (“Directive on Consumer ADR”) obliged Member States to bring into force the laws, regulations, and administrative provisions necessary to comply with it by July 9, 2015. 

Since former Of Counsel of Taylor Wessing Bratislava Lucia Zitnanska was appointed Slovak Minister of Justice in April 2016, the legislative changes prepared by her department have primarily been driven by the practical need to improve the enforceability of law and increase the importance of e-communication tools. To those ends, two major reforms concerning debt enforcement will enter into force in the first half of 2017.

Even at first blush, it is apparent that arbitration and insolvency make strange bedfellows.

Debt recovery is one of the most challenging parts of day-to-day business, especially in an environment where debtors aim to hinder enforcement by fraudulently diminishing their estate. 

Currently, one of the main issues in Slovenia is the ruling in late October 2016 of the Constitutional Court of Slovenia regarding constitutional rights violations suffered by investors in five major Slovenian banks when both their equity capital and the subordinated instruments were written off as a result of extraordinary measures exercised by the Bank of Slovenia between December 2013 and December 2014 as a result of the systemic banking crisis. 

In November, the Bulgarian Parliament began debating the amendments to the Competition Protection Act (CPA) with respect to the implementation of the EU’s Directive 2014/104/EE on Damages Actions for Antitrust Infringements (the “Directive”). Interestingly, the main aim of the Directive and the proposed amendments to the CPA – facilitating the private enforcement of infringements of competition law – coincides with what is probably the biggest cartel investigation in the history of the Bulgarian Commission for Competition Protection (CCP).