The implementation at the national level o the bank account information mechanism under the EAPO Regulation: a comparative analysis

Abstract

One the most praised aspects of the Regulation n° 655/2015 establishing a European Account Preservation Order is its mechanism to gather information about debtor’s bank accounts (Article 14). Situations in which creditors ignore the debtors’ banking details are not unusual. Through Article 14 tool creditors who have already obtained a title (enforceable or not) are entitled to request that information. However, the EAPO Regulation only lays down the skeleton and the main features of this instrument, conferring Member States a wide margin of manoeuvre to decide how to accommodate it in their respective domestic legal systems. Member States are allowed to select the authorities in charge of collecting the information and they can decide on how the information is gathered. This freedom is a source of divergence. The objective of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis on the information mechanism.